Church finance and social ethics

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Church Finance
and Social Ethics

By

Francis J. McConnell

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CHURCH FINANCE
AND SOCIAL ETHICS

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK - BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

CHURCH FINANCE
AND SOCIAL ETHICS

BY ^

FRANCIS JOHN McCONNELL

Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church

Jl3eto pork

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1920,
By the M.VCMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1930.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Preliminary * . . 1

II The Church as Owner 16

III The Church as Solicitor 30

IV The Church as Philanthropist 44

V Christian Expenditure 59

VI The Church as Investor 76

VII The Church as Employer 91

VIII Missionary Effort and Financial Policy . . 105

IX The Body of Christ 118

CHURCH FINANCE AND
SOCIAL ETHICS

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY

It requires only slight familiarity with the news-
papers to discern the part which appeals for large funds
are playing in present-day church activities. Whether
it be that the unprecedented response of the American
public to philanthropic calls during the Great War be-
got a nation-wide habit of extraordinary generosity, or
whether the forced prosperity of a country fairly wel-
tering in gold made the public kindly toward Christian
appeals in enormous terms, or whether the desperate
plight in which European humanity found itself dur-
ing and at the close of the Great War laid a new bur-
den upon the Christian conscience, the fact is that the
Protestant churches have asked and are asking the Amer-
ican people for sums which would have seemed out of all
reason ten years ago. One denomination has already
received pledges to the total of over one-hundred mil-
lions of dollars, another is undertaking a campaign for
one hundred millions, another has secured seventy-five
millions, and still another fifty millions, — all this since
the close of the AVorld War.

1

2 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

"We are to-day prajang for the union of the separate
Protestant denominations into one organic, or at least
federated, whole. The advantages which will come from
such union for more direct and simple phrasing of the
Christian faith are obvious. Obvious also is the elimina-
tion of the scandal of a divided Protestantism giving
itself to competitive struggle at home and abroad. Very-
few of us, however, have faced the duty of thinking
through the implications of the fact that such union
will pour into some central treasury masses of money
beyond all our present calculations. The responsibili-
ties which will be lodged in that centralized office for
proper coordination and correlation in the handling of
money have not yet been taken into the account, nor
have we stopped to plan for the perils involved for the
Church in the very possibility that such sums will soon
come under its control.

Sufificient unto the day is the evil thereof, — the
worldly-wise tell us and they counsel us not to build
the bridges before we get to the rivers. A deeper wis-
dom, however, knows that bridge building is seldom most
successful when carried forward extemporaneously.
The engineer is always gratified to know beforehand
whether the stream can be bridged at all, and what
material is at hand for the construction of bridges. It
is especially imperative that we cast a glance ahead in
view of the tendency of discussions about Church-
union so to focus themselves on the specifically ecclesi-
astical features that some apparently commonplace issues
are in the end left to take a haphazard turn.

For example, representatives of the ]\Iethodist Epis-
copal Church and of the IMethodist Episcopal Church
South, recently agreed upon a plan of union to be sub-

PRELIMINARY 3

mitted to the supreme legislative bodies of both churches
for adoption at the earliest feasible date. The discus-
sion over Methodist union has gone on for years until the
consummation seems — according to some prophets — al-
most in sight, involving as it does the creation of sub-
stantially a new church with over six million members.
A proposed constitution for the new body has been
outlined. Most elaborate precautions have been taken to
protect the rights of the Southern minority and to re-
tain the loyalty of the negro, and to forestall autocratic-
ally-minded bishops from seizing too much power; all
of which is as it should be. There is not in the instru-
ment itself, however, any save the most casual hint as to
how the enormous sums of money raised by such an or-
ganization are to be handled. I am heartily in favor
of the union of Methodism, but as the proposed constitu-
tion now stands it makes possible a financial concentra-
tion beyond anything in the history of Protestantism;
not because anybody intends or desires such a result but
because this, — an apparently non-ecclesiastical "detail,"
— has been allowed to take care of itself. A wiser policy
would keep all such grave possibilities out in the open
from the beginning.

We apologize for uttering such commonplace as that
immense physical resources lodged in the hands even
of the best-intentioned Boards are equivalent to im-
mense grants of power. For illustration we may look at
two foundations which to-day are influencing the educa-
tional institutions of the United States. We refer to
the funds coming from the Carnegie properties on the
one hand and the Rockefeller properties on the other.
It is not our business here to enter into a discussion of
the industrial processes by which the Carnegie and the

4 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

Rockefeller interests came to success. Very likely the
laws to-day would not permit financial activities of the
sort displayed forty years ago by ^Ir. Carnegie or by
Mr. Rockefeller. Probably each pioneer of industry was
as good or as bad as the other. In their defense it may
be said that the social consequences of control of rail-
roads and legislatures and even of public opinion by
dominant financial groups had not in their day been
thought through. Moreover the past is past and a re-
spectable portion of the funds of each magnate is devoted
to the improvement of education in the United States.
We are firmly of the conviction that both the Carnegie
fund and the Rockefeller fund for education have been
productive of far-reaching good. The Rockefeller fund
has, so far as we know, never been used in a meddling
or tinkering spirit. The grants of money seem to have
been voted according to sound educational policy. As
to the Carnegie fund perhaps a careful judgment would
not be so favorable. The first announcement of the
Carnegie purpose led to a frantic scrambling by presi-
dents of denominational colleges to cut loose from church
control or to lengthen their tether far enough to share
in the contemplated financial blessings. The oracular
utterances of some officers of the Foundation also seemed
to be based on the assumption that control over such a
fund made for final authority on all subjects ranging
from pensions and life insurance to politics and religion,
though this was incidental and added to the gayety of
disinterested persons. On the whole, however, the Car-
negie policy on its strictly educational side was probably
sound enough. Granting the worthiness of the inten-
tions of both founders and the correctness of the methods
with which the trustees work, the fact remains that at

PRELIMINARY 5

least for a generation or two these aggregations of money-
will be a potent factor in decreeing what colleges in the
United States shall survive or perish. It will be under-
stood that we are not deploring the existence of such
funds. "We are simply stating the self-evident as to their
power.

There is no reason to suppose that the piling up of
riches in the treasuries of the Protestant churches or of
the Protestant Church, when union comes, will generate
energy any less compelling. The administrators of the
finances, — who will probably go by the innocent title of
secretaries — will have in their hands titanic enginery
whose effects will be felt through the decades for good or
ill. The secretaryships are inevitable — as is their tre-
mendous power. Public understanding of such power,
however, is the first step toward keeping it humble and
tractable.

In addition there are wider considerations of serious
import. Our fathers were declared to have won a not-
able victory when they achieved a separation of Church
and State. Their sure discernment told them that only
harm could result if the State attempted to control the
Church or if the Church sought to manage the State
through any other channel than reasonable persuasion.
In recent years, however, we have learned that no matter
what the form of government at a given time, the
economic forces of that time try to get hold of and con-
trol King and Parliament or President and Congress.
This is not to suggest anything necessarily wicked.
Economic interests should have place in governmental
policies. Economics have more to do with the life of
man than any other interests. The possibility of such
control, however, makes likely an invisible government

6 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

behind the visible. Much of the harm could be done
away with if the economic forces were definitely labeled
so that we could watch them at work. If, for example, a
railroad manipulates the political machinery of a state
so as to send to the senate of the United States a repre-
sentative of the railroad the peril would be diminished
if the newly elected senator could take his oath as the
senator from the railroad. Then we would at least know
where we were and what to expect. There is a shrewd
jest now going the rounds to the effect that the United
States is Bolshevist to the extent of being ruled by a
congress which is a soviet of lawyers. If the lawyers
are just lawyers our plight is not so serious as it is if
the lawyers are agents of screened or masked financial
giants.

Now this old alliance between Church and State which
our fathers thought dangerous can easily return to
plague us if both Church and State in their organized
capacities are too closely dependent on economic interests
which may control both Church and State. It is signifi-
cant that in the vexing days since 1914, when representa-
tives of this or that religious group have dared to speak
out against any war policies which have seemed un-
christian, the first patriots to be shocked and outraged
have been spokesmen of financial interests who have
often called out that government should proceed against
such potential treason. Better have Church and State
wrangling with one another as to Avhich is entitled to
authority over the other than to have both jerked like
puppets by a back-lying and irresponsible economic
master.

A second general consideration arises out of the pos-
sibility of accumulated resources tying the Church to

PRELIMINARY 7

an established social and industrial order, whatever that
order may be. Human nature is prone to identify what-
ever is with what ought to be. This is often true when
persons have passed with middle age into prosperity.
Radical critics of organized Christianity often remind us
that the Church is just about a generation behind the
times. This is measurably true, for the good and suffi-
cient reason that the ministers and laymen now in control
of the Church were born about a generation ago. Having
attained to a degree of success through the methods in
which they were trained, they believe in the superiority
of these processes and are quite likely to identify a social
or industrial state at any one moment with the eternal
verities of the Christian revelation. Here is for Chris-
tianity an ever-present and serious peril. We need not
be radicals to discern the manifest flaws in the industrial
system of the year 1920. Suppose we grant for argu-
ment's sake that as an instrument for production of
wealth the capitalistic system is the best that the world
has seen. We could hardly say much for the claim,
however, that the capitalistic system has been conspicu-
ously successful in the equitable distribution of wealth.
It may be that a producer will not exert himself to the
utmost unless society gives him the right to bequeath his
property to a great-grandson whom he may never see, — ■
and who, when he arrives, may be a knave or a fool.
Conceding this far from self-evident truth, we can not
maintain with much vigor that our present system of dis-
tribution is all that it ought to be. Then if the mildest re-
forms are in order we ought to have an institutional
Christianity which can help toward charting the course
which the reform is to take. The difficulty of render-
ing such service if the organized Church is rooted in and

8 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

interlaced with the established order by the possession
of great wealth is altogether too patent.

A third consideration is the possibility of the
Church's becoming conformed to secular standards by
anxiety over her earthly possessions, or by her uncon-
scious carrying over into the temple a mood and spirit
begotten in the business office. In a notable address,
while he was still President of Princeton, Woodrow
Wilson once called attention to the deleterious effect of
the scientific temper of the age on the pursuit of the
knowledge of higher human values. In substance he
said that it was as if the noxious gases from a laboratory
had escaped into the quiet retreat of the brooding phil-
osopher and were choking him with their poison. If
this be true as to scholarship, how much more imminent
is the peril from the deadly fumes of modern industrial-
ism for the pursuit of the highest Christian ideals!
The estimate of Christian results in terms of statistics
is but one phase of the danger. Who doubts that it is
impossible completely to square the New Testament
ideals with any set of business maxims as yet devised?
One of the chief glories of Christianity is the tran-
scendence of its ideals : but we can more easily scale down
the ideal to meet a secular mood than tone up the worldly
mood to the Christian requirement.

What, then, shall the Church do? One enthusiast is
ready with an answer. He would have the Church cut
loose from all material possessions whatsoever. He
would send evangelists and prophets out upon the high-
ways without plan for support. He would obey literally
the New Testament injunction to take no thought for
the morrow, and to provide neither scrip nor raiment
for the journey. If the prophets relied upon God they

PRELIMINARY 9

would be fed. If they were not fed and so died they
would fall as witnesses to a splendid ideal.,

The sheer vigor of such eloquence will always com-
mend itself to some minds, but after all Christianity is
in the world to save the world. There is something con-
vincing about martyrdom when the victim is thrown to
the lions or burned at the stake. The martyrdom is not
so impressive when the hero dies of under-nourishment
or takes up a life-insurance agency. If the Christian
revelation means anything as to method, it means that
the world is to be saved by trained leaders. That the
training of prophets in the olden time and of apostles
in the later day was not always conventional and in-
stitutional does not detract from the pertinence of this
remark. In every age the effective prophets of God
have been as much marked by intellectual energy as by
spiritual consecration. The prophecies of Amos, earliest
of the literary prophets, are classics forever for the
cogency of their expression and the symmetry of their
form, as well as for their moral and spiritual passion.
But the problem of training a mind for intellectual ef-
fectiveness in the midst of a highly complex civilization
is somewhat different from that of the day of the herds-
man of Tekoa. This one problem of equipping leaders
involves all the costly educational apparatus of our
modern times.

Moreover, the function of the Church is not exhausted
in the vocal articulation of truth. As divine a revela-
tion as any in our day is that of the worth of the scien-
tific method. Fully as important as the actual discov-
eries made by scientists has been the elaboration of the
scientific method itself by which we mean the patient
study of given facts themselves, in the search for laws

10 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

which give us mastery over other facts. It is the duty
of the Church to capture the scientific method as an in-
strument for the advancement of the Kingdom. Es-
pecially is this a duty in the search for laws which mean
well or ill for social groups. In a day which looked
upon sin just as personal guilt to be rebuked, the prophet
needed not so elaborate a furnishing as in one which
recognizes that some evils spring out of the constitution
of society as such. From now on and always a major
part of the work of the Church will devolve upon the
prepared expert. The training of experts, however, im-
plies a relation to and dependence upon the tangled so-
cial institutions in the midst of which we live.

What, after all, is the function of the Church? "We
are told that the function is to generate the moral and
spiritual d3^namic out of which all progress comes.
Suppose, however, there are in the industrial and social
conditions of a time obstacles to the generation of power.
The entire social atmosphere may be so chilled as to
make it impossible to start the fires of enthusiasm. Or
the path of progress may be strewn with innumerable
stumbling bloclcs. Clearly, then, it is the business of
the Church to take upon itself the creation of a new
social climate, or the removal of the social obstacles in
the name of the release of the higher spiritual energies.
One reason for a Church's bestirring itself against the
immeasurable poverty, for example, which drags down
the world is just the Christian impulse to relieve suffer-
ing. But a further reason is the desire of any genuine
Christian leadership to make an environment in which
human beings can exist with measurably normal human-
ity. The high-tide spiritual energies of the race never
will be released until poverty is conquered, or until there

PRELIMINARY 11

is such universal mastery over nature as to make it evi-
dent that if a man lacks the material conditions for
normal human life, the lack is his own fault and not the
fault of society itself.

The first reason for the organized Church's not seek-
ing to cut its connection with the world of money and
property is because it cannot, if it is to keep a foothold
on the earth at all, and the second reason is that example
is better than precept in the crusade to Christianize the
industrial order. It is possible for the Church to do
something worth while, in the trusteeship of its own
material resources, to erect an essentially Christian doc-
trine of the use of wealth. There is to-day abundant
cataloguing of the faults of the Church. Sometimes the
more radical, especially the younger prophets, seem to
feel that the wisest course is one of unrelenting criticism
of the Church at every point where it touches industry.
After all, however, in the face of the certainty of bitter-
est censure, sound church leadership will struggle on to
work out into everyday material deed the industrial and
social ideals for which Christianity stands. Any
Church that thoroughly understands the problem here
will indeed shrink from the difficulties of such a task.
It might be easier for the Church to send its ministers
and teachers out upon the highways to cry against the
evils of the world without financial support from the
Church itself, than for it in its official activities to find
how righteously to exist in an industrial world, and how
to sanctify all the properties coming into its hands by in-
telligent use for the Kingdom of God. We must not for-
get the word of Jesus as to the difficulty of a rich man's
entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. His word is as
true for an institution as for an individual. We must

12 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

not forget also that he declared that with the help of
God even such a spiritual miracle is possible.

A few words of caution are in order. Let it be under-
stood that we have no dogmatic scheme by which to
guide ourselves in our reflections. The Christian sj^stem
must strive for the fullest and highest life for human
beings. It must recognize that the object of all its en-
deavor is flesh-and-blood men, women and children living
in this present world. It must recognize also that these
human beings do not come to their amplest selves apart
from the multifarious group activities which consume
so much of their energies. It must realize further that
the soundest endeavor is not merely to make these lives
bigger in quantitative terms but to refine them to a
higher and nobler quality. To do this there must be
passion for those human ideals and values which possess
worth for all time.

Having recognized all this, however, we must, we re-
peat, obstinatel}'" resolve that we will not yield to the
tyranny of any dogmatic absolutes. We are indeed un-
der the law of absolute good-will one toward another, but
that good-will cannot unerringly tell us what to do at a
given time or place. In all our attempts to find our
path in Christian well-doing there is this element of
relativity. There is no one absolute social system which
we can to-day accept as final. If we should all become
socialists, even Christian socialists, overnight, and should
start out to-morrow completely cut from our capitalistic
past in an environment wholly favorable to socialism,
we should find day after to-morrow that the advocates of
a still newer order would be shouting in our ears; and
with that further order established the heralds of a yet
brighter dawn would reproach us that we had made so

PRELIMINARY 13

feeble a beginning. Disconcerting to our dogmatic
minds as it is, we must admit that in industry, as in
every other realm of human conduct, some systems are
right at one time, that they have their day, and that
then the moral duty becomes that of helping them cease
to be. Some moral courses are best in some places and
worst in some others. It is conceivable that a half
dozen economic systems of widely varying degrees of
development should be flourishing in as many different
nations in one and the same year, and each best adapted
to its own national environment.

This inevitable relativity in moral duties can, on the
one hand, be appropriated as an excuse for moral laxity ;
or it can, on the other hand, be construed as a summons
to the most intense consecration. The compelling moral
problem for a man or for an institution is to keep moral-
ity up-to-date, — or in other words to make every advanc-
ing insight the occasion for revision of and progress in
moral practice. From this angle of view the duty of
the Church in managing the material resources which
are bound to stream into ecclesiastical coffers in increas-
ing flood is to take position at the head of those march-
ing toward a better industrial day and to stay there.
This means, of course, that such threadbare adages as
''business is business" and ''business and religion can-
not mix" must be cast out once and for all. The most
damaging criticism passed upon the Church to-day is
that its ideals as to wealth and its contacts with riches
and with rich men do not square with one another. In
a degree this must always be true, — if an ideal is an
ideal worth following it must forever move on ahead.
But there is dreadful force in the criticism, especially
pertinent when ecclesiastical leaders proceed on the as-

14 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

sumption that in business the Church must act just as
does any other business concern. There must be some
middle course between abandoning material possessions
altogether and yielding to the ordinary and conventional
business maxims. To abandon material possessions alto-
gether is physically impossible. To bow to a merely
conventional business ethic ought to be morally impos-
sible.

Here again some objector may break out that when the
Church gets into these business entanglements it is
neglecting its true functions, — that the Church is in the
world to save souls ; that is its only business. We must
bespeak patience as we reply that as a matter of fact
the Church is on this material earth, that the Church
owns lands and houses, that the Church invests funds,
that the Church employs labor, that in carrying forward
any enterprise the Church expends money. This is true
now, has always been true, and will be true as long as
the world stands. In view of this actual situation we
are raising the question as to how the Church should
comport itself so as not to hinder the work of soul sav-
ing,— but rather to facilitate that salvation.

One further note of caution. Throughout this entire
essay we are to speak of the Church in its organized
form. We are discussing the Church not as a sum of
individuals but as an articulated body working under
group laws. We are occupying ourselves with what the
Church does as a Church. We are not presuming to
enter the closet of individual ethics and to pass judg-
ment upon the financial transactions of individuals.
We shall try not to forget what we said a moment ago
about the relativity of obligations. In view of that
relativity it may be permissible for an individual in

PRELIMINARY 15

peculiar circumstances to sanction, at least provision-
ally, conduct which would not be permissible for the
official vote of the Church to which that individual be-
longs. We say this in the same breath with which we
avow the true aim of the Church to lift the conduct of
all individual members up to the ideal set as a standard
by the Church in its official policies. For the purposes
of this study, however, the most severe exactions are
for the Church, which is never to cease to think of itself
as the organized body of Christ.

CHAPTER II

THE CHURCH AS OWNER

The seriousness of our problem, and possibly some
hints as to its solution, may appear from viewing one
after another different aspects of the contact of the
Church with property. At the outset it may be best to
consider the Church as an owner. Much of the wealth
which comes into the ecclesiastical treasury will nat-
urally remain in the possession of the Church; and
ownership at once provokes criticism from many quar-
ters.

We meet, to begin with, the objection that important
sums should not be allowed to remain in the permanent
keeping of corporate bodies like the Church. The
Church is a corporation, and corporations have no souls.
Harm results from the control of huge funds by entities
which are personal only by legal fiction. Ownership
should be strictly personal. We have heard of recent
years that the only inherent right to property vests in the
individual human being. Property which an individual
has legally acquired is his own by natural and inalienable
justice. It is an unwarrantable extension of this right to
make it include holdings by Church corporations.

This leads us to ask what constitutes the right to
ownership. One type of mind will of course have it
that there is something self-evidently divine about the
right to private property. We have been informed that
one of the Ten Commandments tells us not to steal, and

16

THE CHURCH AS OWNER 17

that the context lends indirectly a divine sanction to in-
dividual property holding. There may indeed be some-
thing divine about the personal right to hold property,
but the divinity must publish itself in social benefits.
The examination of primitive societies does not suggest
that the sacredness of private property is an unmistak-
able moral intuition peculiar to human consciousness
from the beginning. Society seems to have recognized
and then agreed, and then enacted, that the material
goods which one has acquired in sanctioned ways shall
be one's own till one chooses to dispose of them. Cen-
turies of experience are said to have taught that the
human life does not come to its best without some such
control over physical goods as that which we see in
private property. Individual initiative is smothered out
if a man cannot retain power over the things which he
trades for or produces. Simply because of the social
usefulness of private property we have had property
rights enacted into our fundamental laws. Much abuse
by individual holders is overlooked because of the good
of the system as a whole. The legal title is a contriv-
ance intended to protect owners in their rights. But
full ethical ownership of material goods implies high
mastery of those goods. The bow of Ulysses belonged
to Ulysses because he only could bend that bow. The
legal title might have rested somewhere else but in just
social morality Ulysses was the owner. It is in the hope,
often illusory to be sure, that material things will in the
main get into the hands of those who can best use them
that Society maintains the rights of private property,
rights which would be worthless without social support.
The privateness of private property is a creation of the
public will.

18 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

Conceding all the sacredness of individual rights im-
aginable, however, we see all through history the tend-
ency of Society itself to regulate, and upon occasion to
disregard, such rights in the name of the social result.
We can hardly imagine a social situation in which it
would be otherwise. Where is there a community with-
out taxes? Suppose for our convenience we adopt the
familiar division of material things into two classes, con-
sumers' goods and producers' goods, though the division
may not always be clear. Consumers' goods are,
roughly speaking, food and clothes and houses in
which the consumers live. Producers' goods are the
tools with which they work, — ranging all the distance
from a hammer or a plow to a railroad or a steel mill.
Now we could hardly find any extreme of individualism
on the one hand or of collectivism or communism in the
brain of the wildest dreamer on the other — even among
those theories that say most about every man's natural
right to appropriate from a social fund whatever goods
he needs — that would fight hard for the right of a con-
sumer to food or clothes or a house if he did not render
some service to Society in return. A few talkers about
collectivism seem to fancy that under a communistic
free-for-all the loafer would have a fine time. Willing
servants would bring him food to eat and coats to wear
and beds in which to sleep. It would be difficult to find
any formulation of communism even of the most ex-
treme type which would warrant any such hopes. The
communist would, indeed, maintain that under his sys-
tem all men would gladly serve, but if they would not
serve he would not make much more provision for them
than our present compotition makes for chronic and in-
curable laziness. The general assumption is that a man

THE CHURCH AS OWNER 19

must work if he is to eat. So that on the side of con-
sumers' goods the right to property comes, even among
the radicals, to be the right to be furnished with material
that will enable one to keep alive enough to work.

On the side of producers' goods there is not a scheme
even of communistic thinking worth looking at which
would knowingly put industrial tools into the hands of
manifest and confirmed bunglers. And the present de-
vice of private property, as we have said, is built on the
expectation that most men will get hold of the tools which
they can best use. But the aim is always at the good of
the community as a whole. Private property, we re-
peat, is not bom of the self-evident moral maxims ; it is a
system born out of social exigencies for the good of So-
ciety. To be sure, it has been allowed to run unhind-
ered to questionable development, so that a single indi-
vidual to-day may own a railroad stretching across a
continent. The defenders of this extreme development
always speak first of inherent sacredness when there is
any revolutionary murmur against private ownership.
But when they quiet down to the defensible argument
they must justify their system, if they can, on the basis
of the social benefit.

It becomes evident then that the legitimacy of owner-
ship at bottom turns round the social consequences of
ownership. We have now to face the query as to
whether a church can make as good use of material
properties as can an individual. Theoretically at least
the question answers itself. There is no reason why a
group of men professing the ideals of Christ and work-
ing in the spirit of Christ should not produce as whole-
some a social result with material goods as do private
owners working with the ordinary purposes of business.

20 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

If it be objected that corporate ownership is impersonal
we confront no weightier obstacle than if we say that
the ownership of private wealth is personal. If by im-
personal we mean cold-bloodedness and heartlessness we
have indeed a deplorable outcome. But if we mean im-
partiality and regard for the good of the whole we have
an altogether different result, — one which may involve
much for the welfare of Society. If by personal we
mean anxious concern rightly to discharge personal ob-
ligation we have one result. But we might just as well
argue that the personal element in mastery of wealth
leads to whim and caprice and partiality as to argue
that impersonal method in corporate business leads to
inhumanity.

The upshot of it all is that in the use of the funds
which are to come into its possession the Church is to be
judged by the same principles by which all holders of
wealth in a rational society should be rewarded or con-
demned. What is to be the outenme stated humanly and
socially? This one standard will sooner or later be
practically universal in Christendom. Inasmuch as the
purpose of the Church is professedly to bring men to the
stature of manhood in Christ there cannot be the slight-
est objection to putting the test as severely to the
Church as to any other possessors of property rights.

A second objection against the lodging of wealth in
the strong boxes of the organized church is voiced by the
man who feels that thereby the sovereignty of the State
is somehow threatened. There is some force in the ob-
jection, though not always of the sort that the objector
may have in mind. If the State is the tool and organ of
economic interests working for their own purposes the
appearance of a great Church with immense monies of

THE CHURCH AS OWNER 21

its own does bring into the field a dangerous rival, —
assuming that the Church itself is not likewise a mere
tool of the backlying economic powers. This to one side
however, — a glance at the course of history reveals that
the Church has indeed been a dangerous competitor of
the State when the Church has had too powerful control
of earthly goods. It would be possible to make quite a
showing for the thesis that the Protestant Reformation
was an attempt by the State to tear loose from a Church
control which rooted in mastery of economic resources.
If we look to-day through some countries in which a move-
ment like the Reformation has never worked itself out,
we see that substantially a similar motive is at work, —
namely to free the State from an institution whose
power is feared because of its control of the well-filled
purse. It is not the fashion nowadays to turn to Mexico
for many political lessons. But the career of our south-
ern neighbor for many years illustrates the resentment
of States at all self-conscious against too great financial
resources in ecclesiastical coffers. The moment, though,
that the Church has been taught its fitting place by an
anti-Church social movement and devotes itself to
spiritual exercises, that moment the State opposition is
likely to cease. What States object to is not the pos-
session of wealth by the Church but the use of money,
or of the influence or prestige which the money brings,
to influence the current of political events. It is often
said that the Roman Catholic Church to-day is as much
of a property holder as the Standard Oil Company.
Two obstacles prevent our knowing whether this is just
or not: first we do not know how much the Roman
Catholic Church owns, and second, we do not know how
much the Standard Oil Company owns. Whatever the

22 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

holdings of the Roman Catholic Church however, the
plain citizen of the ordinary State on whose vote every-
thing finally depends is not overmuch concerned so long
as the weight of the immense financial resource is not
thrown into the political scale.

Has a Church, then, no right to express itself on a
political issue? The Church certainly has such a right
so long as it confines itself to open and aboveboard pro-
cedure in the light of noonday. There can be slight
moral justification, however, for any reliance upon ma-
terial possessions to influence a political result. Of
course it would be unthinkable that a Church would out
of its treasury make appropriations in an ordinary po-
litical campaign. In a campaign having to do with ex-
traordinary moral issues the Church might feel the neces-
sity of making its physical resources count on one side
or the other. Even in such case citizens of the State
have cause to complain if a single penny is spent in a
way that the public does not understand. There is no
institution on earth more under obligation to throw its
financial books open to the world than is the Church.
The Church method at every crisis at all political should
be one of persuasion in the name of the supreme Chris-
tian ideals. If any financial influence beyond this is to
count a feather's weight, the world is entitled to all the
facts.

The danger in these days is not so much that the re-
sources which are sure to come to the Church will count
against the State as that they will count too much in
favor of the State. "We would not deny the right of the
Church in a grave national crisis to cast all its legitimate
influence to the cause which it deems to be just. It was
through the agencies of organized Christianity that im-

THE CHURCH AS OWNER 23

mense volumes of material support came to the Allies
against the Central Powers. I was ardently desirous of
seeing the will of the Allies made to prevail, so that
there is no lurking taint of pro-germanism in my expres-
sion of the hope that such official Church operations will
never again have to be so definitely subordinated to a
state policy. The Church is to stand for transcendent
ideals. It must so conduct itself as to be always free to
proclaim those ideals no matter what the policy of the
State may be. For the next twenty-five or fifty years
the peril to Society may be not that Church and State
are hostile to each other, but that they are too friendly.
We mean by this that the only earthly power that will
save civilization from recurrence of a horrible catastrophe
like that of the past half-dozen years will be one that
bears aloft the torch of the social and international ideals
of Christianity: and that if the Church is to do this it
must be so free from the State as not to be tempted to
bedim its ideals by compromise.

A third objector against the growing financial power
of the Church has much to say about the physical goods
of this earth belonging to all men in common. He can-
not see why a Church is allowed to enclose lands which
should be open to everybody and to crowd those lands
with buildings which are opened only once or twice a
week. If this were all of the objection we could meet it
by pointing out that many churches to-day are open all
the time and that we are proclaiming that wherever pos-
sible the Church should serve twenty-four hours out of
every twenty-four. There is, however, back of the ob-
jection a vague and hazy notion of what is good for So-
ciety. In discussing the foundations of private prop-
erty we said that Society had established these rights

24 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

for the worth of the social outcome. "We must urge
that Society is not just a big number of persons, any one
of whom has a right to feel aggrieved when he sees ag-
gregations of property devoted to purposes of which
he does not personally approve. Society is, indeed, the
sum of all the individuals that compose it. But these
individuals live in organic relations to groups to which
they belong. Among these groups is the Church. Not
only does a man become a new creature when he enters
the Kingdom of God but he becomes a new creature when
he joins the Church. That is to say, he enters into a
net-work of relationships to his fellowmen which draw
out of him powers to which he never could have attained
as an unrelated individual.

This grouping instinct is one of the outstanding facts
in human history. In the form of the Middle Age Guilds
it was the most significant factor during hundreds of
years of European life. Socially worthy organizations
have claims as sacred as those of individual persons, and
these claims have the same foundation as other social
rights, — namely they are granted because of the benefi-
cial social consequences. Every now and again some
radical whose knowledge of social processes is not as ex-
tensive as his zeal shouts out for the confiscation of the
property of age-old institutions. He does not under-
stand that these properties are not just so many heaps
of material stuffs which could be divided equally among
the confiscators. To tear away the material possessions
of many an organization serving a good social end would
be not to distribute coins among the multitude, but to
destroy living organisms which minister to Society it-
self.

To appropriate an illustration from a secular field we

THE CHURCH AS OWNER 25

may remind ourselves that there is in the United States
a fund granted out of the estate of a multi-millionaire
for the most thoroughly scientific investigation of the
causes of diseases. It would be possible for a social
enthusiast to excite himself desperately over the pro-
cesses by which in other days the money which now pays
for the scientific inquiries, was heaped up. He might
even persuade a body of followers that the only fair
course would be to confiscate the fund and distribute it
among the people. Assuming that he succeeded in do-
ing this, however, Society would soon be compelled to
vote grants continuing scientific investigation precisely
similar to that now being subsidized by the fund, and
to make the grants in such fashion as to keep alive the
most vital feature of the scientific organization, the
esprit du corps of the investigators. Much social
criticism fails to see that even sums of money become
integral parts of the social organisms which are living
entities. Here again the test is as to the social con-
sequences. We can only appeal to the ideal of the
Church and say that the Church can manifestly work
with a more wholesome social result if it can have the
benefit of whatever will increase its group consciousness
and group effectiveness. What the Church will with-
draw from the pockets of Society will not likely be too
much if the money truly adds to the efficacy of an or-
ganization preaching the ideals of Jesus. All comes
back, however, to the worth of the human product, to
which we must hold steadily. The quasi-personality of
the group is sacred only as it serves a sacred purpose.
Business corporations organized for utterly selfish pur-
poses are forms of group activity. Political parties are
social organisms. If Society cannot redeem financial, or

26 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

political or any other group activities set on selfish or
unsocial aims it has a right to reduce them to impotence.
And this opens the door to a final objection, which is
that the grant of property to Church organizations en-
courages the growth of the delusion of a super-organiza-
tion above and beyond the people composing the or-
ganization. We are reminded that this was that inner
vice of Prussianism which plunged the whole world into
war. The sin of Prussianism, however, was not so much
in the erection of a super-State before the mind of Ger-
many, as in the character of that super-State. The ideal
beneath which the individual was to be as naught was
that of brute might hacking its way through to universal
victory. The Church has an ideal which indeed reaches
out beyond the members actually composing the Church
at any one instant. The ideal is of a communion of the
saints which includes not merely those striving after
righteousness here and now, but also those who have
struggled and passed on, and those who are to come here-
after. It stands for a picture of human life yet to be
realized, — a social body of Christ, a righteous humanity
whose members are as closely correlated as the organs of
the human body. The dream may never be materialized
on earth. From this point of view the Church does
stand for a super-body or for a super-thing beyond any-
thing here and now. Is it not worth while to have an
organism witnessing to the belief in such a hope? Can
there be anj'thing more beneficial for Society as a whole
than to have such a conception floating, not as a cloud
castle before the far-seeing gaze of poets and seers, but
as a working plan to guide the efforts of men and women
and children in the daily task ? Is there any more noble

THE CHURCH AS OWNER 27

goal than this toward which the golden streams of earth 's
physical resources could be turned?

And yet we must not miss the force of the objection.
If the Church is to receive increasing control over the
things of earth it must arrive at that habit of mind which
surely discriminates between the temporal and the
eternal, and between the instrumental and the end-in-
itself. Money is an instrument. It would be easily pos-
sible, however, for the accumulation of material goods to
become an ecclesiastical end-in-itself. We have beheld
altogether too much of such a tendency in the history of
the Church. The ends-in-themselves in the Church are
the lives that compose the Church, as those lives move
on toward the progressive incarnation of the Christian
ideals. The instruments in the Church are creeds and
rituals and organizational contrivances. They are tools,
or organs, to aid in the development of life. But how
often have we seen the relation reversed and the creedal
formula, for example, placed in foremost importance?
An organizational scheme is nothing but a device for
human and spiritual uplift, but how often have we seen
organizations, as such, exalted for almost worshipful
honor. So it might be possible for a Church, especially
in a commercial epoch, to make the possession of material
goods of more importance than the welfare of human
beings. This possibility must always prevent us from
turning hastily away from those who protest against
property-holding by the Church because of the likeli-
hood of property to be erected into an end-in-itself.

We repeat that ethical title to ownership implies an
ability to make the most of the material owned. In later
chapters we shall examine some of the standards by

28 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

which the Church must judge its expenditures. We may
anticipate by saying that the obligation upon the Church
is simply to use money as a key to unlock the higher
treasures. We say of money as a mechanism of ex-
change that its value consists not in anything in itself
but in its power to travel from hand to hand and from
pocket to pocket, figuratively transmuting itself into the
foods on which men can subsist, or delivering the tools
with which they can labor. It is the business of the
Church so to utilize all its material possessions as to
unlock for men the doors to the finer riches.

What those riches are the Church will itself have to
be, in the first instance, the judge. The outside indi-
viduals and groups and Society itself cannot prescribe
for the Church beforehand what to seek for with its
resources. The State and Society can indeed lay down
laws and establish customs within which the Church
must move, but the Church itself, as a body of persons
looking toward the highest spiritual ideals, will be ex-
pected to announce the content of those ideals and the
method by which they are to be reached. If the
Church, however, has this initiative, this first word —
the general public opinion of Society will have the last
word. The results of Church activities will in the end
have to be such as commend themselves to the public
mind and conscience. And this ought not to be an im-
possible achievement. Enlarging and improving life
has a power of rendering itself intelligible to the dullest
understanding. Deeds of kindness and helpfulness
need no interpreter. There may be unfathomable depths
in religious truth, and the ideal in Christ maj' forever
march beyond our arm's length, but what truth we get
bears witness to itself, and what measure of the ideal we

THE CHURCH AS OWNER 29

attain has spontaneous attractiveness. By its fruits the
Church is to be known. The people who have to eat the
fruit will be the best judges as to its quality. It will
not do for the Church to declare that the Christian
ideal is in its keeping and that it cares not whether men
outside give heed, since it is the authority in its own
sphere. The loftiest ideal must at last cast the farthest
reaching shadow on the ground ; and by the social healing
in that shadow will the justice of the claim of the Church
to an increasing share of this world's goods be judged.
There is no divine right to property apart from a divine
resolve in using property to make men more open to the
divine. We move here in a realm altogether apart from
the narrow legal and conventionally commercial. The re-
sources of the Church belong to the Lord in that they
are to be wholly devoted to the cause of the divine
Kingdom. If they are not so devoted they lack social
justification — and apart from social worth they cannot
be soundly defended by abstract legality or appeals to
divine sanction.

CHAPTER III

THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR

The problem of the Church as solicitor at first glance
seems to be no problem at all. All the Church has to
do is to put before its members the recital of the needs
and then to reenforce this with the spiritual appeal.
The Church professedly exists for the realization of the
finer possibilities of mankind. The showing of the
money requirements necessary ought to be the only re-
quisite for inciting Christians to adequate response.
Readers of the New Testament recall that Paul fre-
quently asked for financial aid for Christian causes. —
that he simply mentioned the needs and based the claim
on the accepted thought of the spirit of Christianity.
"Remember the poor saints at Jerusalem," he would
say, "And then remember also Christ Jesus who though
he was rich yet for your sakes became poor, that ye
through his poverty might become rich." There could
not be a more dignified call for money or one more de-
serving of substantial return.

Unfortunately, in this tough-grained and twisted
world, it is not always possible to attain the Pauline
standard. One of the armor joints at which the Church
is most often assailed is its dependence upon financial
contributions, and the real though often unconscious
dependence also upon those who make the contributions.
Even if all the constituency of a Church were at the top-
most peak of consecration many of the con.secrated would

30

THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 31

have their own notions as to how Church money should
be spent, and these notions might not be of the sanest.
Actually the money of the Church comes from a con-
stituency not wholly sanctified and some of the con-
tributors are outside the Church. It is possible, then, to
press the charge that the exigencies of the Church make
it necessary for it to adopt an attitude of virtual com-
promise toward rich givers. It would be almost impos-
sible to-day to listen to a speech of any length directed
against the Church without hearing this criticism that
the Church sells its birthright by its acceptance of the
gifts of the rich. Because of this dependence upon
money contributions the Church is often condemned for
having the class consciousness of the well-to-do.

Twenty-five years ago quite a notable debate raged
over the propriety of a Church organization's accepting
"tainted money." When the revelations as to the prac-
tices of some of the great corporations first came to light
the spontaneous feeling of any strictly ethical conscious-
ness was that money gained by such processes was
tainted, to say the least. We must not disparage those
who took this stand. Men like Washington Gladden
rendered a public service in calling attention to the
impropriety in a Church's accepting, without a word, a
share in ill-gotten gains. Much criticism was heaped
upon Gladden and his followers, some churchmen avow-
ing that the scruple was absurd and even silly. We
were gravely informed that money in itself cannot be
tainted, that any money to which a man has a legal right
ought to be freely accepted by a Church, that to say
otherwise is pharisaism ; all of which now seems quite
beside the mark. The Gl-adden group were speaking out
of an awakening social consciousness. They were pion-
eers in a new field, trying to guard the Church and So-

32 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

ciety from the evil effects of alliance with anti-social
forces. They are entitled to unstinted credit for their
note of warning, though the problem would not be put
to-day just as they stated it twenty-five years ago. If
the money was indeed tainted the best way to remove its
taint was to devote it to a good cause — return to those
wronged being out of the question — though such a course
would not remove the taint of the giver of the money,
especially if he kept on supplying taint.

The pertinent consideration, however, — in spite of the
dictum that guilt is always personal — is that the faults
of a corporation are likely to be faults of men not as
individuals but as groups. The charge should lie against
bad group ethics, — this regardless of whether the group
is big or little. Too many corporations practice only on
a world scale what too many smaller firms are doing on
a village scale. The best way to attack such a problem
is not by refusing gifts from one supposedly outstanding
personal offender in a spirit of inquisition into individual
consciences, but by effort to improve gi*oup morality.
This is most desperately imperative. Many a person-
ally upright business man is helpless in the clutch of a
machine which he alone cannot improve. When we
speak of the Church as itself an investor we shall in-
dicate some ways in whieh it is possible for Christian
conscience to favor concerns wliieh are acting according
to the best social light available,— possible too without
laying the Church open to the charge of inquisitional
fussincss. When the Church seeks the worthiest cor-
porations with which to invest its money it is free from
the charge of not attending to its own business, since
the Church 's investment of its own money is strictly its
own business.

THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 33

The moment we begin to talk about the evils of sys-
tems we are halted by those who will have it that the
Church is wrong in accepting any money from rich men
at all. All the rich are lumped together in one category
as parts of a system which is altogether evil. But this,
we repeat, is hasty, to say the least. Many are doing the
best they can in an order which they would be glad to
make better. And under any system some men will have
more than others ; and ' ' riches" is a relative term. After
Society has rooted out all the artificial inequalities there
are some inherent and natural differences which cannot be
escaped. Among them the inequality that comes from the
ability of some men under any conditions to get more
money than others by the superior worth of the service
they render, and by their ability to hold fast to what
they have earned. Suppose we strip from individuals
all riches that descend by inheritance, or all that pile up
from anything like an unearned increment. Suppose
we decree that no man shall have a cent of economic rent,
or of interest, or of profits for which he has not labored.
Unless we go on then to laws which would at least at
present stamp out all initiative whatsoever, we would
find that at the end of ten years, or even at the end of
five, some men in the community would have in their
possession manifold more than other men, and every
cent of their resources might have come out of a service
rendered the community. It may be that the possession
of immense wealth under the present industrial order
argues that the owners have received a reward beyond
anything they could legitimately have earned. But
even under the present scheme we cannot pour unspar-
ing condemnation on the man who has fairly played the
game according to the rules which now obtain. Some

34 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

day we may change the rules, or we may even do away
with the game altogether. But as long as the game is
played according to the rules established by Society's
sanction, undiscriminating condemnation of the rich be-
cause they are rich is unreasonable and unwarranted.

Passing now from the notion of tainted money and of
wickedness inherent in wealth as such, what are the
perils which confront the Church as a Solicitor of funds
in a day when the funds are sought in such huge
amounts? It will be understood that we are writing
this essay after some opportunity for observation of
facts. "We may say then that the danger is not pri-
marily that rich men will seek to control the Church.
If we take any list of prominent preachers in any gen-
eration we find that probably all of them have at various
times serv'ed congregations composed at least in part of
wealthy pew-holders. Probably all the bolder speaking
prophets in the pulpit through any stretch of years
would testify that the number of attempts at direct con-
trol of their speech had been small. To more of an ex-
tent than we may imagine even the wealthy pew-holders
expect a measure of boldness in pulpit utterance. "While
we have not data at hand to verify our conclusion we
are of the opinion that there is less attempt at direct
control of the preacher's utterance by rich contributors
than there is of control of newspaper, for example, by
rich advertisers, or of the politicians' speeches by heavy
givers to the campaign fund. We may legitimately'- im-
agine that after some sermons the rich listener thinks
very emphatically and that he may even speak out with
considerable force, but he does not often directly pro-
ceed to official action against the preacher.

Just as the attempts at direct control of pulpit utter-

THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 35

ance have been comparatively few, so also the attempts
to interfere with the utterance in the educational institu-
tions of the churches have been few, or were few until
the Great War for the time being tore us loose from all
our accustomed fastenings. The outrages upon free
speech perpetrated in the past few months must be
diagnosed as wholly abnormal. We have confidence
enough in the mass of the people to believe that these
lapses into bigotry and intolerance and social lunacy will
pass as the war fever cools do^va.

What is, then, the danger that confronts the Church
in raising money? One danger is in the phrasings of
appeal shaped to render them convincing to wealthy
contributors. The test of the success of such appeals is
the amount of money that flows into the coffers of the
Church in response. It could hardly be expected that a
call for funds for the Kingdom of Heaven which glows
with much heat on the manifest inadequacies of the pres-
ent industrial order would get a lavish welcome from
the upholders of that order. We might indeed hear no
violent invective against the appeal but the list of sub-
scribers would not be long. Again, successful soliciting
for funds depends upon a quality of mind and ability in
the solicitor which does not tend toward the most rugged
and uncompromising fearlessness of utterance. What-
ever truth there is in the charge that the Church has
th« class consciousness of the man of wealth probably
arises out of the fact that so many leaders of church
enterprises at one time and another have to devote so
large a share of their time to interviews with well-to-do
potential contributors. Making every allowance for the
personal integrity of such solicitors they must be rare
souls indeed if they successfully withstand the tempta-

36 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

tions which come from long continued personal associa-
tion with the possessing: classes.

There are pleasant incidents connected with enter-
tainment by a rich man which at least get the nose under
the tent for the camel of the rich man's social philosophy.
"Wealth surrounds itself with some charms of taste and
refinement which are often more appreciated by the
solicitor of the contribution than by the contributor him-
self. The solicitor must be a patient listener; he will
hear repeated expositions of the superiority of the pres-
ent social order as over against any other social order
that the world has ever known. Very few rich defenders
of the order moreover are quite so blunt as to say that
they believe in the order just because of its material
productiveness. They see in it rather the foundation of
law and the buttress of family life and the bulwark of
religion. If the upholder of the present industrial sys-
tem takes an interest in theology at all he is likely to be
altogether orthodox. He is impressed by a Christianity
which lays stress on authority and feels most content
when he hears that the authority roots in an infallible
Book or an infallible Church. Unless the solicitor is
extraordinarily self-controlled he emerges from a few
years of successful solicitation of funds from rich men
thoroughly imbued with the class consciousness of the
well-to-do. It was this possibilitj' which years ago led
Robert Smillie, the greatest English labor leader of our
day, to say that be would never "accept invitations"
from the rich. A well known ecclesiastical educator in
this country was for years most successful in securing
financial aid for his university from the leaders of a
mighty corporation almost constantly under fire of
criticism. The defense of the corporation methods by

THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 37

the ecclesiastical leader was so whole-hearted as to lend
color to the charge that he was advocating practices
which the leaders of the corporation themselves had
abandoned years before because they were convinced,
they said, that such methods were socially harmful !
Even such solicitors, however, with such a class con-
sciousness seldom break out in frontal assault against
those who feel it to be the function of the Church to
warn of current social perils. They confess to an im-
patience with the impatience of their radical brethren.
They regret that the critics do not have more tact, and
advise that zeal be tempered with judgment. They also
insist that utterances should be timely, — by which they
usually mean the lapse of a safe period after there is
reason for saying anything. Or they are like an ec-
clesiastical editor to whom Borden P. Bowne, at the time
the foremost thinker in American Methodism, once sub-
mitted a manuscript for publication. The editor agreed
that everything in the manuscript was true but he re-
gretted that the writer had not stated the truth in such
fashion as not to attract notice.

It is in such directions that the peril of the Church as
a solicitor of funds must be sought. The danger of at-
tempt at direct control is slight. The masses of the
Church would resent such control. The risk is that he
wlio has dealing with rich contributors for much of his
task, with rare exceptions will arrive at the point of
view of the contributor. Any man who has been in the
ministry for a quarter of a century can recall preachers
who began their careers by being prophets of God and
ended by being chaplains of the well-to-do, — chaplains,
too, very deft in pulling the sting from the piercing
phrases of the Gospel. One such solicitor once rebuked

38 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

a subordinate official who was protesting against having
to sit silent before a prospective giver's oracular pro-
nouncements in defense of all details of the capitalistic
system by saying: "It is your business to convert dol-
lars as well as to convert men." The reply seems quite
final until we begin to think it over. "We do not always
begin to convert men by telling them what fine fellows
they are. Souls are not often flattered and tickled into
the Kingdom of Heaven. Conversion implies a convic-
tion for sin and the desire to forsake sin and to lead a
new life following the commandment of God. If the
conversion of dollars were occasionally sought by arous-
ing similar spiritual stirrings we might well rejoice in
such conversions as gleams of the dawn of a new day.
But not many doUars are converted bj^ just such pro-
cesses.

Still there are solicitors who bring money to the King-
dom of God in thoroughly ethical ways. Moreover, lest
we seem to have left the rich men in a bad light, we may
say also that in the United States increasing numbers of
rich men can be found who will contribute money to
causes led by men in whom they indeed have confidence
but in whose methods or views they may not altogether
believe. There are in our country educational institu-
tions controlled by boards of trustees who will not think
of interfering with the instruction of the institution so
long as they believe in the ability and integrity of the
instructors, and who will heartily reelect such teachers
for terms of years. It is more and more the case that —
wretched events of the last year or two apart — holders
of financial power will support radical utterances in
which they do not agree. A memorable instance oc-
curred in 1916 in the relation of the late Willard

THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 39

Straight to the publication of The New Republic. It
will be remembered that Mr. Straight was supporting
this journal of liberal opinion with extensive pecuniary-
aid for what he conceived to be the general good of the
community. In the presidential campaign of 1916 the
editors of The New Republic decided to favor Mr. Wilson
for the Presidency. Mr. Straight desired to see Mr.
Hughes elected. Instead of forcing his own choice upon
the editors of the journal, or of withdrawing his financial
support, Mr. Straight was content to publish a letter
expressing his own political views and then to leave the
editors free to follow their course. This was tolerance
worthy of the name, — tolerance of a view opposed to
one's own view, and that not on an incidental trifle, but
on an issue of genuine importance. Valuable as were
Mr. Straight's many services to his country none was
more valuable than this manifestation of a spirit which
means everything to a nation which depends for its
social progress on free discussion.

We may count upon public sentiment to encourage
an ever enlarging spirit of generosity on the part of the
well-to-do. It requires only ordinary intelligence to
recognize that the capitalistic system to-day is on trial
as never before. Abstract arguments either for or
against the system are of slight value. The effective de-
fense will have to be the cultivation of social responsibil-
ity by the well-to-do. It is now the common expectation
in this country that when a holder of vast possessions
dies he shall leave a considerable share of his holdings
to some agency devoted to social betterment. There is
general recognition that this is the most effective way to
keep the holdings intact. As we said on a previous
page, even if the extreme doctrines of some social radi-

40 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

cals should be one day adopted and all endowment funds
should be confiscated in the name of the public welfare,
the community would find that if it was not to suffer
irreparable harm it would be compelled to set aside out of
the common treasury sums for the very purposes which
had been served by most of the endowments.

Only a short memory is necessary to recall the day
when the holders of property were looked upon as en-
titled to do what they pleased with their own. It is not
twenty years since President Hadley of Yale was the
target of much caustic ridicule from some newspapers
of the country because of his declaration that the time
was approaching when pul)lic sentiment against the" ir-
responsible use of wealth would become so terrific as to
bring about the social ostracism of the well-to-do who
would not take their social trusteeship seriously. Within
a comparatively few years after President Hadley 's
prophecy an insurance investigation in New York dug
up much startling evidence as to the frivolous, not to
say immoral, recklessness of some kings in the financial
w^orld. No penalties were enacted by a court after the
investigations, but within a few months the wrongdoers
had, most of them, been eliminated from all possibility
of future wrongdoing with a deadliness which was simply
tragic. The only executioner at work was public opin-
ion. We are not saying that we rejoice in the temper of
the public mind which puts compulsion upon those be'
queathing goods to grant portions of them to social
enterprises, but we do say that the public expectation is
what it is, and that gifts for social causes are more and
more regarded as of the normal duty accompanying the
possession of w^ealth. In this consciousness of duty
many of the well-to-do freely and gladly devote

THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 41

large measures of their wealth to the common good.

We have given much of this chapter to a phase of our
subject which is after all of secondary importance. It
would indeed be damaging to the Church if the time
should ever come when it would be chiefly dependent
upon the generosity of the well-to-do. But with pros-
pects of denominational union as bright as they now
are, and with present-day emphasis on every-member
canvasses, the funds of the Church will not come in chief
part from the offerings of the more favored. Indeed
they have never thus come. The generosity of the or-
dinary givers has made possible the enterprises of the
Church, The new plans make for rosier expectation of
material generosity, however. The totals will soon be so
high that no single giver or group of givers can say that
their individual contributions decisively influenced the
outcome. One of the denominations of the United States
recently finished a campaign for over one-hundred mil-
lions of dollars. The records show that no individual
gave more than seven hundred and fifty thousand, and
that the one gift of three-quarters of a million was a far,
far cry from the next largest gift.

With the most of the church money coming from the
pockets of what we call the plain people we have less to
fear as to a repressive use of such money against free-
dom of speech than if the money came chiefly from the
rich. The ordinary man is not only the bulwark of the
State but of the Church as well. He will sanction the
expenditure of money for more progressive social pur-
poses than will he in a more favored lot who has a
greater stake in the continuance of a given set of in-
dustrial circumstances. The Inter-Church Movement,
for example, recently set aside a considerable sum for

42 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

the investigation of the Steel Strike of 1919. Because
of the manifest impossibility of getting reliable informa-
tion from the newspapers, the leaders of the Movement
felt that it was only proper that twenty-two millions of
church people in the United States should at least have an
opportunity of learning the facts concerning a grave in-
dustrial crisis. Who would be more likely to approve
such use of funds, the rich man, or the "plain man"?
More than one rich man saw in the investigation itself
something almost resembling sacrilege. But the plain
man is not an easy victim of any such fears. He can be
reached readily by arguments that point toward the
common welfare. I\Ioreover, he himself wants to know.
With the contributions coming from the mass of the
people the framing of appeals for funds will have to
lay more and more stress on the social value of the ends
to which the funds are to be put. The man who is
skilled in dealing with favored individuals on their
weaker sides will find it advantageous to develop other
types of argument if he is to be shifted to the field of
public appeals. It is true that under the new system
we shall not have so many buildings honoring the names
of individual donors, but we shall have schools and hos-
pitals with every cent of their value devoted to the
common welfare. The only danger in reliance upon
masses of the religious constituency for financial support
is the possibility of waste in expenditure. And yet this
danger, in this present hour of pitiless publicity, be-
comes less and less important. The test of any financial
policy is its fruit. If the Church shows that its material
outlays arc producing the type of yield for which the
Church stands, charges of extravagance will get scant
heed. Besides we must remember that church money

THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 43

accounts probably get minuter scrutiny by greater num-
bers of interested and conscientious persons than any
other accounts. Any religious organization worth the
name takes good care that the possibility of the misuse
of funds for personal ends is reduced to a minimum,
and with all the books open, chances for foolish and in-
considerate handling of consecrated goods also becomes
infrequent. The principal chance for error is through
some fundamental mistake in policy. But if the policy
must be one which millions of men pronounce essentially
in harmony with Christian ideals the possibilities of
substantial mistake here should not cause us undue
anxiety. It is hard to frame effective appeal for gifts
from hosts of Christians unless the appeal be sincere!}^
Christian. We may well rejoice that we seem to be at
the beginning of a day when we must lay emphasis more
and more upon the deepest human needs as we ask for
financial sui>port in great church campaigns.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST

The Church has always l)een conceived of as a phil-
anthropic agenc}^ distributing- bounty in outright gift
with a more or less lavish hand. The line between the
spending of the Church in free gifts or grants of aid and
in direct purchase or payment in harmony with a defi-
nite policy is indeed so fine as to be almost fanciful.
But the division has its value nevertheless inasmuch as
Church appropriations which are a bestowment of gifts,
rather than expenditure in purchase of goods or services,
raise unique ethical considerations, — two or three illus-
trations of which it may be worth while to glance at.

We may revert for the moment to a distinction which
we have previously utilized between material conceived
of as consumers' goods and conceived of as producers'
goods. By producers' goods we mean broadly the tools
with which men work. In the grant of consumers' goods
to those in need the Church will always have a responsi-
bility. One of the last recorded acts of Jesus in his life
with the Twelve was so to speak to Judas, who carried the
bag, that the disciples concluded that Jesus was ordering
a customary gift to the poor. There is so much suffering
in the world that the Church is under the common ob-
ligation of all human institutions to do everything pos-
sible for the mitigation of that suffering. There is not
now in the world food enough to go around, or at least
not equitable enough distribution to allay the hunger all

44

THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 45

over the world. In the presence of this gnawing pain
one duty of the Church is to hurry forth to quick re-
lief.

And yit if the Church heeds the example of Jesus she
will see that her function as a relieving agency is not
altogether exhausted in the gift of direct aid. Some-
thing can be done by the Church toward eliminating the
inequalities of the present industrial system. If the
Church would seriously set herself to a constructive plan
for the betterment of the modern industrial order as
such she could, along this single path, accomplish more
for physical hunger than by outright scattering of mil-
lions of loaves of bread. It is strange to note the up-
roar which arises in many quarters when the Church
thus proposes to improve the industrial machine.
Same business leaders who freely admit that it is the
duty of the Church to distribute alms will raise a hue
and cry about the danger of losing sight of the pure
Gospel when a prophet proposes a remedy which will
help do away with the necessity of giving alms. Still
the almsgiving of physical goods is a part of the task
of the Church. The work is, of course, not so to be
carried on as to pauperize those who receive the gifts.
This danger, however, is in our day of scientific handling
of charitable grants, practically negligible.

"We are more concerned with the formal appropriation
made by denominations to instrumentalities aiming at
religious results, — results as fundamental as the winning
of converts and the carrying forward of religious educa-
tion. The organizational features of the Churches and
schools are so many instruments to be used in the ad-
vance of the Kingdom. Grants to such institutions are
not the bestowal of broad and meat upon the hungry, but

46 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

the supplying of tools with which to work. In such
philanthropies the question is as to who can use the tool
best. We have sometimes heard social organizations cry
for help somewhat as if they were poor stricken travelers
on a Jericho road. One celebrated solicitor for educa-
tional funds delights to tell how he won the favorable
response of a leading capitalist by painting his school
as the wounded sufferer on the roadside and the capitalist
as the Good Samaritan. This appeal is interesting
chiefly as showing what a solicitor can do when he is put
to it. The school was not in need of bread or of medi-
cine, but was essentially asking for instruments. The
Gospel Samaritan, on the other hand, was handing out
immediate relief, and not placing tools in the hands of
a wounded traveler. If such had been the nature of
the neighborly obligation the Samaritan might well have
passed several days at the inn to find out just what in-
strument the pleading man could best use. The moment
we regard the agencies of the Church as instruments for
the accomplishment of a purpose the question becomes:
who can best use the instruments 1 Professor Palmer of
Harvard has made an interesting remark concerning the
distribution of scholarship funds which have been placed
in his trusteeship. He declares that it is his observation
after many decades of experience with college students
that if any help is to be allowed it should be given to the
students who are capable of doing the finest intellectual
work, rather than to those who are financially neediest.
This at first sounds rather heartless. But there is im-
plied here the distinction which we are trying to draw.
If the problem is just that of relieving hunger then Pro-
fessor Palmer's course does indeed seem harsh. If, on
the other hand, the problem is that of putting tools in

THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 47

the right hands the course is wise. Professor Palmer in>
sists that his policy has been amply justified by the so-
cial and scholastic results.

The Church is in the world for the salvation of the
souls of men and for the progressive building of those
souls into righteousness. With this as the purpose of
the Church is it wise for denominations to vote money
outright to organizations in communities where there
are already churches enough for evangelization and
Christian training? AA^e have heard much of the elimi-
nation of Church competition in recent years, but we
have not yet heard too much. Let us trust that the new
plans for federation and for union will so succeed as to
do away with the positive evils of such competition.
Before such elimination comes, however, we shall have
to dwell on some other phases of the present-day situa-
tion than just the waste of money involved in competi-
tion. The fact is that there are wide tracts of territory
in the United States to-day where members of this or that
church do not look upon souls as safely saved until they
are connected with just the denomination to which these
worshipers themselves belong. As an official of the
Methodist Church I have had ministers from rural dis-
tricts protest against federation agreements because the
evangelistic services of churches other than the Methodist
do not succeed in getting seekers through to a clear ex-
perience of salvation ! To such minds all reference to
financial considerations seems trifling. The task here is
to bring the Methodist or the Presbyterian or the Baptist
to a state of grace where each will concede the efficacy
of the other's theory of the method of salvation- If we
can bring the Church constituency to see that after all in
organizational features the Church activities are instru-

48 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

mental, we can do much to shift the point of view of
many Christian workers. Aid in overchurched fields is
now sought as if it were the necessities of spiritual life,
while what is really bestowed is a tool which may be
abused in unrighteous competition. To overstock a com-
munity with churches is not less absurd than to overstock
it with steel mills, or wheat elevators, or cotton factories,
or blacksmith shops. To call such overstocking phil-
anthropy is woefully inaccurate terminology.

It is a delicate operation, — this of bringing the
churches to discern the difference between the instru-
mental features of the Church which may be competi-
tively wasted and the Church as composed of persons
who are ends-in-themselves craving the fundamental ne-
cessities of spiritual existence. One of the recurring
tendencies repeatedly manifest in the history of the
Church is this of confusing means and ends. If the
sacred funds raised for Christian purposes are not to be
wasted in a reckless competition the Churches will have
to come to a more intelligent emphasis on what salvation
is, as over against the manifold methods of presenting
the ways of salvation. We need tliat enlargement of
view which helps us see that there may be many meth-
ods of presenting religious truth effectively with no one
method having conclusive advantage over any other.

For illustration by analog}'' we may reflect that de-
mocracy in political life can get its will expressed through
widely varying forms of governmental procedure. Eng-
land is more domocralie than the United States in getting
the popular will quickly into action, but England's form
of government is to a measure monarchical. Or, to take
a further illustration, the Anglo-Saxon method of de-
termining the guilt or innocence of an accused person

THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 49

is trial by jury with the ruleKS of evidence most carefully
prescribed. The Anglo-Saxon mind is thrown into par-
oxysms of mirth in watching the Latin mind in its pro-
cedure in trying to find the truth about the accused.
The Latin reciprocates with contempt toward the Anglo-
Saxon. And yet probably as many guilty persons are
brought to justice under either system as under the
other. Similarly the man who has been reared a Presby-
terian may have some difficulty in understanding the
trustworthiness of the Baptist or Episcopalian pathway
into the Kingdom. But Episcopalian or Baptist saint-
liness when it is once attained is quite as satisfying as
Presbyterian saintliness. For saintliness means a life
lived in obedience to the will of God, and the gifts and
graces which flourish from such obedience. The central
governing boards of most churches see this clearly.
Their duty is to cease making grants to competitive or-
ganizations where a community is jammed with the tools
of religion. If a scant handful of persons desire to
have in a community of twenty other churches a church
of their own stamp there is no objection provided they
pay their own expenses. Any group of believers is en-
titled to any luxury of this kind that they can them-
selves pay for. If a man desires to carry two watches
he can do so, — if he pays for them. But there is every
objection in everyday ethics to the use of funds raised
generally throughout the Church for the spread of the
Kingdom of God, as grants to such groups. If the
members of a struggling Church — with other Churches
within a stone's throw — piteously wail out that the
mother denomination is leaving them to starve the ad-
equate reply is that the possibility of starvation is not
up for debate. There is enough nourishment in the

50 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

community to prevent any one's spiritual famishing.
The sole question is whether an extra instrument shall
be placed in the hands of persons who are showing that
they have not the slightest understanding of its proper
use. The problem is not that of allowing the Church
to die, — it is rather that of keeping an instrument out
of reach of the wrong hands.

More important, however, than this negative duty of
withholding is the positive need of the Churches coming
to some agreement and understanding by which, either
through direct cooperation or the partition of territorial
responsibility, they can throw masses of material sup-
port into unchurched, or foreign speaking, or rapidly
changing communities for the sake of Christianity's
getting a quick hold where otherwise everything will
fall apart, morally speaking. Here again the Church
must be on guard so to make its grants as to call forth
all the latent strength of the community itself. At the
start such communities may require practically all the
resources from outside. But they should not be helped
a day longer than is required to develop their own self-
reliance. It might conceivably be good policy for a
denomination to throw all its available power for some
years into a given locality. And then for another period
of years to throw none of its material there. It is well
for us all to remember what help is. Help is certainly
not such direct aid as to leave the aided organization
nothing to do of itself. Help is aid in cooperation with
effort on the part of the beneficiary.

A further illustration of the possibility of ethical
laxity in church finance can be seen in the aid given to
or withheld from denominational educational institu-
tions. The denominational colleges of the country have

THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 51

been and are a part of the glory of the American educa-
tional system. The virtue of such institutions has been
not so much in the excellence of the expert instruction
as in the ideals that have prevailed in the colleges, and
in the Christian atmosphere. The view of the world
from the college window has been Christian and the
spirit of service has been Christian. "We recognize to-
day a quasi-personality of social institutions, — colleges
among the number. The youth who becomes a member
of such a body partakes of the indefinable virtues and
vitalities of the body itself. The school puts its mark
upon him, — a mark which he never would have known if
he had studied alone at home or if he had been lost as
an infinitesimal freshman in a huge university. We
have all this in the back of our minds when we speak
of the tradition of the school, — or of the school spirit, —
or of the school stamp.

Once more we may take advantage of the apparent
coldbloodedness of Professor Palmer's advice. Inas-
much as the process of education is so costly that social
groups must undertake this process at an expense which
never can be met by the students themselves, — an ex-
pense which rightly calls for appropriations from all
the funds which are legitimately at the disposal of a
denomination, — we may properly insist upon a prefer-
ence for the schools which are doing the best work. Put
the tools into the hands of those who can use them best !
The teaching of the parable of the pounds, which has
been so often enforced, is in place here. To take away
the one pound from the servant who had carefully kept
it wrapped up in a napkin is indeed a cruelty if the
pound is something to eat ; but if the pound is an instru-
ment with which to work it morally belongs to the man

52 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

who knows how to expand one pound into ten. Inas-
much as the Church is doing so much to support educa-
tional institutions the only ethical grant of the money
is to give it to those who can put it to the wisest use.

This will of course be met by protest from poverty-
stricken colleges all over the country. We shall be told
of the devotion of the founders of other days, of the
possibility of the professor's coming close to a student
in a small school, and of the intensity of the religious
spirit that prevails in such schools, — all of which is in-
teresting but may be irrelevant. The educational tools
of the present day are costly and delicately contrived,
loaded with possibilities of good and ill. They belong
only to those who can wield them aright. There is a
world of suggestion in the old adage that it is the busi-
ness of the college to teach the young idea how to shoot.
Freedom of thought is safe only in the countries where
the young idea knows how to shoot straight, — and to
point at the targets worth hitting. It will not do for
Society to be subjected to a fusillade from young ideas
that have been imperfectly trained to shoot.

This may be seized upon by some who maintain that
it is a waste of money for the Church to be devoting
large sums at the present time in direct appropriations
to educational institutions. We have no patience with
such objection. AVe shall have occasion to say later
that we believe most heartily that one of the chiof obliga-
tions of the Church of to-day is to train its membership
in hard thinking. And around the hard thinking should
be the genuinely Christian atmosphere. We are all
willing to admit that there is no good reason why the
Church should go to expense for technical schools or uni-
versities for advanced intellectual research. But no

THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 53

education is even liberal unless it is founded upon a
liberal view of the world, of the dignity and worth of
human life, and of the forces which play through the
world. The college is the place for an introduction to a
general world-view, and in that world view the Christian
perspective should be regnant. It is significant to note
that among the first items asked for in the recent Inter-
Church Campaign was the sum of one hundred millions
of dollars to be devoted outright in grants of aid to
educational institutions.

If any factors in our present life need Christianization
the educational need that Christianization. There are
inherent tendencies in educational systems which are
away from the best, and any amount of money is well
spent that will counteract the downward pull of such
gravitations. For example, the teaching profession itself
tends to become a vested interest. It is natural that
after men have spent thousands of dollars in fitting
themselves to instruct in a specialty they should not care
to see that specialty lose its importance in the eyes of
Society. So we have many programs bolstered up that
are of dubious value to the growing youth of the com-
munity. What hardship has not the adolescent mind of
generation after generation suffered from ever-emphasis
on the classics and mathematics ! A student has worried
with Latin for eight years, for example, and has left the
last recitation with relief that he will never have to look
at Latin again. Most of such over-emphasis comes be-
cause we have groups of teachers who can teach such
branches and nothing else. All that saves us from the
tyranny of such vested interests is the general good
sense of the community. The Church should have the
same good sense and ask at least this question, — "What

54 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

kind of intellect is the college turning out?" Is not
Christianity synonymous with good sense?

The second danger in educational institutions against
which the power of great educational funds in the hands
of the Church can well guard is the over-development
of the technically scientific spirit, though the scientific
temper as such should be claimed for the Kingdom.
Science moves largely in the realm of method. She
deals with instruments, — especially instruments of pre-
cision. There must, we repeat, be a closer alliance than
ever between the Church and the scientific temper. The
Church's ideal of the worth of a human life has indeed
so far influenced modem thought that there is little
danger of our American institutions running to the ex-
tremes of barren technicalism. But the emphasis on the
human values must not be lifted. A friend of the writ-
er's was once visiting a Latin-American country famous
for a medical institution which was technically of high
excellence. In particular, a marvelous technique for de-
veloping vaccine for smallpox had been perfected in the
institution. The establishment was justly celebrated
for this specialty, but there was more neglected and
ignored smallpox in a given radius around that institu-
tion than in any other like territory in South America.
When the visitor from North America tried to point out
this unfortunate coincidence he was met by an uncom-
prehending stare. The events of the past war have
revealed to us all too clearly what to expect when high
scientific proficiency becomes harnessed to a low human
ideal.

We are not among those who fancy that this problem
of the Christianization of education can be ade(}uately
met by such campaigns as that to put the Bible in

THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 55

the public schools. Through cooperative efforts the
Churches are beginning to take account as never before
of the essentials of Christian ideals for humanity upon
which we can all agree. The Christian Church has a
right to insist that at least in its broad outlines this
human ideal is to be kept central in the instruction of
the American youth. No worthier object of Christian
philanthropy can be found than this of maintaining the
exalted human reference in all study. One of the most
welcome signs in American educational life is the willing-
ness of the state universities to cooperate with the
churches which try to put near the campuses of the
universities prophets of moral and spiritual power who
will interpret the Christian ideals. The state universi-
ties have in the past fifteen years taken long strides in
the humanization of their systems of instruction, but of
course they cannot give themselves to specifically re-
ligious activities. If the Christian churches would, at
whatever direct cost, put opposite the buildings of the
state universities pulpits or platforms for outstanding
religious leaders they would render a surpassingly legiti-
mate service, — no matter what the expense might be.
If this were a denominational competitive propaganda it
would be all wrong. If it were the filling the minds of
students with Christian ideals it would be all right.

The indirect effect of the Church upon education has
already been immeasurable. It was formerly assumed
that the ministry and the teaching profession were the
chief spheres in which the ideal of service was to rule.
If a boy studied engineering or medicine or law he of
course worked with the expectation of being able to make
money for himself. This was especially true of the field
of law. But even this field, to say nothing of the others,

56 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

has been invaded healthfully by the ideals of substan-
tially Christian service. Probably the greatest single
group of the brightest minds of Harvard University is
to be found in the Harvard Law School. This would
be appalling if it were not that the ideals of social service
now markedly govern the instruction at the Harvard
Law School.

This chapter is intended to be merely illustrative of
the responsibilities of the Church as she pours out her
treasures in direct gift by appropriating boards. The
purpose of the Church is to hold the Christian ideal on
high. We speaJi often of the broadening influences at
work in the life of Christianity to-day. Perhaps it
would be permissible to say that many of these are in a
legitimate meaning narrowing influences, — narrowing
the Church down to all-essentials, — the idea of God, —
the relation between God and man. In all her use of her
material resources the duty of the Church is one and the
same, and this duty really gives unity to this somewhat
rambling citing of illustrations. But what gives per-
tinence to the discussion is the peculiarity of human na-
ture to take less seriously the responsibility for the dis-
tribution of money by voted grant-in-aid than the respon-
sibility of directly buying goods and paying salaries and
wages. With the grant of aid the trustee often thinks
his responsibility ended. But he is mistaken. If the
Church gives bread and water and garments to the man
who is hungry and thirsty and cold, the gift takes the
significance not just from the relief from suffering, but
from the fact that certain goods are due all those with
whom Christ has identified himself. The gift given to
one of the least of these is given also unto him. The
same ideal rules in the use of religious and educational

THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 57

and all other benevolent instrumentalities, — the ideal of
human values toward which every instrument should be
brought into play with its greatest effectiveness. Money
is the spirit of service hardened into concrete substance.
When the Church wastes or misuses this divine instru-
ment it is not only misusing a tool, but is wasting the con-
secrated saintliness which made the tool possible. And
the tool itself makes for the wide circulation of saintli-
ness,— gives it purchasing power, — and carries the Gospel
ideal into places that the saint could never personally
reach without this wonderful instrument for the exten-
sion of his power.

Here may be as fitting a place as any to protect our-
selves by a discrimination in our use of the term "mere"
instrument. When throughout this essay we say that
human values are to be held superior to instrumental
values we mean that instrumental factors are to be kept
in the instrumental place, and not pursued as ends-in-
themselves, or as producers of selfish profit. Viewed as
instruments many material factors are unspeakably val-
uable,— valuable enough to call forth all the energies of
the human will in their quest. A seeker of money may
appear to us a frenzied fool until we learn that what he
seeks is an instrument which will open the eyes of a
blind child or that will carry bread to a famine-stricken
nation. All materials are "mere" compared with the
human benefit which they themselves bring to mankind ;
but the very worth of those benefits bestows worth on the
materials. Quinine in a malaria-ridden pest hole, diph-
theria anti-toxin in a plague-stricken home, chloroform
on a battlefield, wheat for the starving, and coal for the
freezing, tools for necessary work of the world, — all these
are matter, but matter of such serviceableness that upon

58 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

a critical occasion a man might well risk his own life
that these merely physical goods may get into the hands
of those who desperately need them.

CHAPTER V

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE

The writer recently attended a meeting of churchmen
at which the possibility of securing more money for
presentation of the bearing of the Gospel on the social
question was brought forward as a reason for closer
union among the churches. This argument was no
sooner mentioned than one somewhat excited brother
protested that union for such a purpose was altogether
aside from the true aim of the Christian Church. He
avowed that plans for expenditure to enlighten Christian
communities as to social duties should have no place with
organizations whose chief calling is to save souls.

In spite of protests like this those who are pressing
for closer church union insist that one of their main
hopes, if not the main hope, is to secure more adequate
resources for remolding the thought and purpose of
Christian communities as to the social conditions under
which men live, — and that because it is indeed the func-
tion of the Church to save the souls of men. This evan-
gelistic aim being primary it is entirely legitimate for
the Church to further any policies which will push soul-
winning farther and make it easier. Quite likely
evangelism will not hereafter make so limited an appeal
to individuals as our fathers heard. The Church is pro-
ceeding on a safe course when she refuses to recognize
longer the artificial division between the individual Gos-
pel and the social Gospel, for social conditions are to-day

59

60 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

the chief obstacles to winning individuals for the King-
dom ; and individuals show that they are Christian most
convincingly when they seek to make the social order
Christian.

It is urged that we must reach individuals as indi-
viduals if we are to be saviors of men. "Who denies
this? The Church has a right, however, to protest that
salvation is not to be compressed within a tight round of
personal duties. The race has through the centuries
worked out a code of moral obligations which are indeed
now sun-clear as binding upon the consciences of Chris-
tians. Men are not to lie or to steal or to be cruel to
their families or ugly to their neighbors. Progress in
Christian living, though, consists in including more and
more persons within the reach of righteous contact and
more and more deeds under the Christian law. The
abominable separation between secular and sacred took
its start from the proneness of Christian morality to
settle upon those manifest personal religious obligations
which are self-evidcntly binding. Outside of this little
circle the moral obligations have not always been clear;
and the outer field has therefore become secular in that
here men have felt free to do about as they have pleased
inasmuch as no Christian law has seemed to be imme-
diately applicable.

Sections of the wider territory are now being pre-
empted for colonization by Christian morality. The
social consequences of some sources of conduct which we
formerly looked upon as morally harmless or indifferent
have been seen through and pronounced evil. Once
these evil results are evident the obligations of Ihe Chris-
tian conscience are as indubitable as Ihe age-old virtues
of abhorrence of lying and stealing. The purpose of all

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 61

evangelistic effort is to touch the central springs of the
will, — to persuade the wills of men into harmony with
the will of God. If, however, the immense sums now
being contemplated for evangelistic campaigns do not
look to an extension of the obligations of the trans-
formed life beyond the narrowly personal the evangelism
will not be fully Christian, We indeed strive for the
transformation of individuals, but at such a transforma-
tion of individuals that they will themselves demand
that the evangelistic spirit is to be carried into all the
relationships of life.

But what do Christian leaders to-day mean when they
speak of duty to evangelize institutions? Are not in-
stitutions impersonal? As organizational tools institu-
tions are indeed impersonal. But institutions in another
aspect are persons behaving in definite ways when they
come together in institutional comradeships. Human
beings within these institutional unions often act differ-
ently from their behavior outside. And there are well-
known laws of group psychology according to which men
attain powers in groups which they would never grasp as
loose and independent units. It is the purpose of the
Gospel to redeem even these group activities, declaring
that as members of institutions men shall act according
to the spirit of the Gospel.

But what has this to do with the saving of souls?
One thing it has to do with the saving of souls is to
remove most formidable obstacles to the spread of the
Kingdom of God to-day, those obstacles being the glar-
ing contradictions between the spiritual conduct of mul-
titudes of men in the narrowed personal rounds and
their conduct in their institutional activity as members
of an industrial system, or of a warlike nation, or of a

62 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

professedly superior race. If it is true that we have
developed many surpassing types of saintliness in the
intimate personal duties it is also true that these same
saints often act like barbarians or savages or wild beasts
when they join hands as partisans of a political view, or
as competitors in an industrial order, or as citizens of a
nation bent on war. This is not cynicism. It is but
recognition that the Christianization of the human being
is progressive. One who is Christian in his inner per-
sonal circle may be far from Christian in his business or
his politics or his patriotism. And in international con-
tacts there is not as yet any faint flush of the dawn of
Christian internationalism conceived of as a public opin-
ion sworn to push Christian principles into international
policy. This limitation of Christian obligation to the
immediately personal causes the outsider to pass Chris-
tianity by as of little consequence, or at best as an affair
of intimate individual privacy.

The Christian Church is not working for the remaking
of the more inclusive social relationships just for the
sake of dabbling in something which is none of her busi-
ness. Iler impulse springs out of a realization that the
imperfectly moralized institutional activities are to-day
a hindrance to saving the souls of men. Grant that
many foolish radicals assail existing institutions without
the slightest spiritual motive ; that many yearners after
the mystic in religion are distressed by over-emphasis on
a social Gospel which lacks glow of warm richness of
feeling. Concede that it is possible to galvanize an in-
dividualism which professedly sets itself against a social
point of view into a show of effectiveness by huge audi-
toriums and mammoth choruses and thunderous brass
bands and furious exhortations to hit a sawdust trail :

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 63

the Kingdom of heaven tarrieth even after full use of
such methods. The Gospel does not quite mean — "every
man for himself and the devil take the hindmost." "We
admit this sounds unjust but some extreme individualism
is so self-centered as almost to warrant such a charac-
terization.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.
What did Jesus mean? Suppose he meant what he
said, that in the Kingdom of Heaven those filled with the
spirit of the Kingdom would be the masters of the re-
sources of the earth. Obviously in this respect the
Kingdom has not yet come. Fancy grouping together
the owners of the earth in some vast assembly, — the
possessors of the great landed properties, the holders of
the mines, the controllers of the oil-wells, the masters of
the railroad and steamship lines, and then flaunt over
them a banner inscribed, ''Blessed are the meek for they
shall inherit the earth." The most charitable interpre-
tation of such an inscription would be that we had got
our labels mixed. And yet that one contradiction stands
stubbornly in the path of the spread of Scriptural
Christianity throughout the earth. The charge that
Christianity has failed is absurd : but we too often reply
that Christianity cannot justly be called a failure where
it has not been tried. This is altogether too easy and
can be in turn met by the further query, — Why has
Christianity not been tried? The answer is that the
evangelization of masses of men in their industrial and
international relationships is a task of such prodigious
size as to involve almost a transformation of the social
climate. Individualistic evangelization is like giving a
man a fire for his own hearthstone as compared to trans-
formations of the cosmic system which will beget new and

64 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

warmer airs for a world population. The transforma-
tion has indeed to come through individuals, but the
individuals must cooperate and the cooperative effort is
to stretch out to such extent that until now resources
have been altogether inadequate. The wealth required
will indeed be stupendous, demanding an altogether re-
adjusted focus in our perspective as to exp(niditure.
Yet we shall have to make the re-adjustment if our ex-
penditure is to be thoroughly Christian. The task here
is somewhat like that of stamping out cholera or typhoid
fever. Individual physicians are not enough. For
thousands of housewives to boil water is not enough.
The whole watershed which furnishes water to cities
must be kept pure by community cooperation.

For the sake of a further glimpse at the formidable-
ness of the duty before the Church let us reflect for a
moment that the task implies nothing short of re-fashion-
ing public opinion. "Whatever the channel of public
authority at a given epoch selfish forces seek to get hold
of that channel and use it for their own purposes.
Finance thus for long manipulated legislatures. Now
Finance seeks the outright manufacture of public opin-
ion,— the controlling power at the present hour. This
does not mean the subsidizing of kept editors to make
whatever comment their masters wish so much as the
manipulation of the news itself. Probably most of what
we read in newspapers and magazines about industrial
and international matters is true, — but it is half-true and
out of perspective. If the Christian Church could main-
tain an organ for the publication of the whole truth, —
or all the relevant facts — it coulcl quickly change the
most serious conditions in industry and international
relationships. The fact — admitted before the United

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 65

States Senate Commission — that financial concerns inter-
ested ia Mexico pay one publicity agent $20,000 a year to
see that the United States newspapers are duly informed
as to all the horrors of Mexico, gives a hint as to the
expense confronting the Church if it takes seriously the
problem of informing public opinion on international
matters. Is there a Church official in the United States
receiving $20,000 a year ? But the great expense would
be worth while. The people can be trusted when they
know.

Early in Christian history the believers in the new
faith were called those of the Way. Jesus referred to
himself as the Way. When he spoke of sinners he often
charitably treated them as stumblers, and upon one oc-
casion broke out almost fiercely upon those who put
stumbling blocks before even the least of those walking
upon the Christian highway. While this is all figure of
speech it is rhetoric deeply imbedded in the oldest strata
of the Gospel. We shall never cease speaking of the
Christian life as a Way. How odd that the legitimate
implications of this figure have so long escaped the
Christian understanding ! Can we imagine any one ex-
pression which could suggest a social responsibility more
unmistakably than that of keeping a road in order!
No state will allow the care of its roads to be turned over
to private citizens. The building of the road and its
upkeep are distinctively social functions. With this
rich suggestiveness the Christian way is in the keeping
of the Christian Church. How absurd then to speak of
a Christian life as if it were to be forever the overcoming
of obstacles that have no proper place in the road ! The
Christian life is not meant to be a leaping over hurdles
just as an exhibition in spiritual athletics. It is some

66 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

day to be a natural and uninterrupted progress along a
road so smooth that a child can travel it without danger
of falling. Some lives are so heedless and slovenly that
they will stumble on any road, but that does not relieve
the Church of responsibility for leveling down the moun-
tains and filling up the valleys and making smooth the
pathway for the child of God. If it be objected that
we are laying stress on "environment" our reply is that
a road is indeed environment, but that it is an environ-
ment that reveals the degree of consciousness of moral
and human responsibility of the citizens through whose
kingdom the road passes. Roads are supposed to be
kept in repair, to be freed from robbers, and to be so
built that travelers can march over them easily and
smoothly to their destinations. We all may fitly pray
for the deeper coming of the Kingdom to individual wills
who voluntarily surrender to the will of God, and we
may then as fitly show our sincerity by going forth to
make the road so easy that the difficulties of progress
will be reduced to the minimum.

Keeping to this New Testament figure we may say
that up to date traveling on the Christian way has been
so much given to keeping out of pitfalls, to climbing over
needless barriers and to dodging robbers that the traveler
has had little chance to view the landscapes through
which he has passed, — or to make rapid enough progress
toward the fair city which is his goal. There is no New
Testament warrant for fighting unnecessary temptations
or bearing unnecessary crosses. ]\Iake the world as good
as we can, there will remain temptation enough to test
the strongest soul. Much of the argument against the
removal of the social, international, racial obstacles to
Christianity to-day is about on a par with that of those

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 67

wise defenders of the now defunct saloon who insisted
that saloons should line the highway for the sake of
developing in youth moral strength enough to resist the
temptation to enter. Men put this argument with grave
faces whose sole business was to make youth enter. To
urge a day-laborer to be Christian with all the obstacles
put in the path by social institutions of an unchristian-
ized industry, to ask a Chinaman or a negro to tread a
path almost buried under international and social preju-
dice, borders upon the tragic.

It is the business of the Church to make the road as
easy as possible, for it will be steep and stony enough
at best. The distances to be traveled toward spiritual
ideals will themselves tax the most exuberant strength
and the toughest endurance. We have said that the
Church is to hold aloft the spiritual ideals and to make
them winsome and magnetic through the manifestation
of the spirit of the Christ. Suppose we employ another
terminology for the moment and say that it is the busi-
ness of the Church to make it easy for men to pursue
the good, the true and the beautiful. The conquest of
the good is indeed a mighty moral triumph but who ap-
plauds the triumph? It should be the duty of the
Church to create an atmosphere in which applause for
the good deeds does not have to be coaxed or coached,
but leaps spontaneously to the lips of the world itself.

What is it that buoys up the heart of the soldier in
the long, dreary marches of the campaign? We say
"marches of the campaign" advisedly, for there may be
something about the intoxication of battle which sweeps
men out of themselves. The sternness of war is the
drudgery. What carries soldiers through the drudgery
is not only the flag for which they are fighting, but the

68 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

awareness of marching in step with the spiritual com-
panionship of a nation. So in the long marches and
campaigns toward the Kingdom of God the struggle of
the Church to make public opinion in which moral war-
fare becomes easy will be an imperative dut3^ We can-
not imagine the result in moral achievement if we could
break loose from the doctrine of negative triumph over
obstacles to the doctrine of positive victory. Suppose
we could, through the resources of the Church, at least
make the beginnings of a society in which men would not
have to conquer artificial enemies or brave public senti-
ment before they began positively and constructively to
serve : and in which they would find industry and society
and politics pouring inspiration on them after they be-
gan to serve. Suppose the Church could present men
with opportunities for service in a society already
thoroughly imbued with a cooperative spirit so that the
effort of each could be caught up by the reenforcing
comradeship of all: or suppose the Church could create
an atmosphere of expectation of highest Christian
achievement from workers and could crown their deeds
Avith the laurel of wise praise, — what of the successes
of evangelism in such a supposed world?

Evangelism, then, the center of Christian effort, but
with large-scale attempt toward a new climate or en-
vironment in which evangelism can urge a redemption
of all man's activities — this is a policy which would war-
rant a Church expenditure beyond anything which
Protestantism has seen. Granting the above as the
Christian policy of outlay for the Church, there are im-
plications not to be overlooked.

Some radicals were moved to mirth by a defense of the
existing capitalistic system recently advanced by one

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 69

anxious to do ample credit to that system. The capital-
ists serve, said this defender, by being spenders. Hu-
morous as this seems when we think of some objects that
capitalism spends for, there is yet a truth in the defense
which ought not to be laughed out of court. Putting to
one side all the absurdities of extravagance and all the
vulgarities of personal display, let us not forget that
possessors of funds serve Society when they devote them-
selves to right spending. We have seen little serious
argument to prove that if state socialism came suddenly
into power in a country like ours the state would be any
better spender than the private holders of capital.
There would be at least under such socialism magnificent
opportunity for wastefulness of which legislators might
not be slow to take advantage. The vulgar expression
that public finances are in the eyes of legislators a pork
barrel suggests about what we might expect from state
socialism when it came first to the open treasury door.
It may have been some suspicion of grim possibilities
here that caused the remark attributed to Bernard Shaw
that if he were a multi-millionaire, anxious to bestow
benefit on the public, he would spend his money on
objects which the public would not itself think of foster-
ing. This, of course, partakes of the usual Shavian in-
temperance, but the remark has some pertinence. The
power to spend money brings heavy responsibilities.
The public will in the end sanction expenditures of a
true wholesomeness, but the public does not of itself
always spontaneously think of such objects of expense.
"We have spoken of the responsibility of the Church
so to wield her financial power to create a world which
will encourage good doing, — and which will push evan-
gelism forward to an all-inclusive program. May we

70 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

now say that this involves an obligation upon the Church,
especially in these critical moments, for the stimulation
of hard thinking. This can only mean encouragement
of discerning judgments by competent social critics, the
publication of many utterances for which there may not
be at the outset a wide-spread demand, the cultivation
of a popular temper for thorough-going religious argu-
ment. The Church ought to help create a market for
the finest intellectual wares. It is a serious reflection
upon Protestant Christianity that leaders of Christian
thinking have many times to hesitate as to whether it is
worth while to attempt to publish discussions of the
weightier religious problems. In scientific circles al-
ready enough of interest in discovery as such, has been
generated to make possible the support of publications
which mark advances in scientific knowledge. There is
not much corresponding to this among the Christian
churches. One of the tragedies of the course of Protest-
ant history in the last quarter century has been the
difficulty of getting patronage for adequate treatments
of profound religious themes except for writers given to
sensationalism or possessed of an unusually brilliant
style. So it has come to pass that even Christian preach-
ers have looked outside the Church to students like Mr.
Wells for the formulation of newer statements of the-
ology,— this too when the problems merely ou the intel-
lectual side are more intricate and complex and call for
more power of sustained reflection than in any epoch
since the Church fathers. Criticize the Roman Church
all we please, at least in the earlier centuries that church
achieved a union of piety and intellectual power which
is one of the marvels of history. We can no longer ex-
pect Church leaders to be encyclopedias of knowledge.

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 71

But if they are not to develop genuine intellectual en-
ergy thej' will fall short of their full Christian function.
The saints of the early Church were often the scholars
and thinkers. Even those who surrendered themselves
to the severest practical tasks found opportunity for the
exercise of intellectual talents: they conceived of them-
selves as worshiping God by the sheer intensity of their
thinking. With a sound spiritual instinct the Church
praised such high discipline. So far as we know there
was no sneering at mental effort in churchmen in the
old da^'s when the Church was making some of its most
practical conquests.

In the later time we find ourselves utterly amazed at
the terrific brain vitality of a man like Las Casas. Here
was a reformer so devoted to freeing the natives of the
West Indian Islands as to bring down upon his head
the wrath of all the colonial officials of his day, — a radi-
cal scorned as a wild dreamer. Yet when the records of
his life are studied he stands forth as a student of human
conditions to whom nothing that concerned man was
empty of interest. He is revealed as a master of the
knowledge of the Christian centuries before his time.
When the supreme crisis for his defense of the Indians
before the Church council arrives he appears as the
ablest debater of his age. After the lapse of nearly
four centuries his scholarly narratives are the basis on
which historians of the period of the Spanish exploration
of the New World must build. Now in all this Las
Casas was not merely the individual of surpassing native
endowment; he was the child of his Church, — a church
which with Christian discernment insisted that the dis-
cipline of the mind is one of the heaviest Christian ob-
ligations.

72 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

It may help us here to take more seriously the welfare
of the church constituency committed to our charge.
An illuminating story has come from a Russian district
which passed through first the "white" terror and then
the "red" terror. After the Bolshevists had established
their system they increased the supply of physicians in
the community by decreeing that hospital internes be
recognized as trained physicians. Shortly thereafter
the afflicted community protested that worse than the
white terror or the red terror was this new "green"
terror. It is our duty to spare congregations the dis-
tress of the green terror.

As with the intellectual pursuits so also with the
pursuit of the beautiful. It will prove a miserable epoch
in the history of the Church if the increasing control of
financial resources does not accomplish something to end
the divorce between religion and art. The Puritan is
needed in every age to bring us back to moral first prin-
ciples and to focus our attention upon the primary will-
to-do-right. But the Puritan is to be supplemented by
the Christian of bigger mold, lest art be driven away
from the believers to the Philistines. A critic of the
Christian Church exclaimed in the early months of the
war that Christianity had shown its moral bankruptcy
through the shriller outcry over the injuries to the
cathedral at Rheims than over the death of soldiers on
battlefields. The point seemed to be that Christianity
was more a}sthetic than human. So far as we now re-
call, it was not the Christian Church that lost its balance
in any such outcry. Moreover when the leaders of the
Christian Church protested against the despoiling of the
cathedral the protest was not merely against the defama-
tion of a treasure of art. The Middle Age cathedrals of

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 73

Europe tower skyward not merely as art masterpieces in
themselves, but as manifestations of the achievements
possible when an entire community is surcharged at once
with the religious spirit, and the artistic impulse, and
the sentiment of human brotherhood. The cathedrals
are not the achievement of any small group of geniuses.
They would not have been possible except in social groups
whose closeness of organic unity has not been surpassed
in the history of the race. All classes of workers
wrought together, fired by the desire to create a stupen-
dous material expression of an artistic instinct which had
become religious, and of a religious spirit which was
seeking outlet in the finest of physical forms. Nothing
since the cathedral days has approached this triumph of
merging the spirit of brotherhood with enthusiasm for
religion and art.

Here again the Roman Catholics have best held to a
high ideal. A Protestant Church in a great city has
often debated a change of location because of removal of
its constituency. The Roman Catholics have indicated a
willingness to buy the Protestant building, chiefly for
the sake of preserving the spire, — a miracle of grace and
symmetry which dominates a vast field of view.

Man does not live by bread alone. The too heavy
emphasis, however, upon the basic utilities of life has
pushed apart elements that should have been kept to-
gether. Intellect has become skeptical, art has become
irreverent and religion has lost itself in the routine of
the commonplace. Henceforward each of these activi-
ties must move in a more or less separate circle, but their
reunion, at least to a degree, is one of the tasks of the
greater Church. Since its beginning Protestantism has
been chronically poor. One of its obligations in this

74 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

newer day, when supporters of religious enterprises
seem willing to think in terms of millions rather than
of hundreds and of thousands, is to open again the chan-
nels for the loftier forms of worship. The fundamental
task of the Church in its use of its resources is to make it
easy for men to do the will of God in an atmosphere
which normally and naturally suggests obedience to the
divine. But at whatever cost the Church must also in-
sist that obedience to the divine will is not complete until
we think God's thoughts after Him, and until we seek
expression for that thought in beauty permeated with
the divine. An ardent worshiper once declared that she
could never listen to a great organ in an American
Church without realizing with a pang that the cost of the
organ would have provided a dozen Protestant chapels
in China. It would perhaps be too severe to suggest
that upon the occasion of a like comment One in the
olden time gently rebuked those who declared that the
alabaster box should have been sold and the money given
to the poor. Perhaps a more suitable reply to the good
woman so anxious about China, would be that full Chris-
tianity will not have come to China until more than a
dozen chapels are replaced by temples in which the
Chinese themselves shall hear organ strains pealing forth
in intrinsically Christian beauty.

To sum up, the most truly Christian expenditure is
for evangelism, — but for an evangelism that redeems all
of man's nature and activities, reaching forth to those
wider relationships which in the end involve the veritable
transformation of the world's social climate. If some
perplexed saint protests that the social gospel never
saved anybody the adequate reply is, — possibly not, but
because the saints have lacked a social gospel many lives

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 75

have not responded to an individual gospel. If objec-
tion arises that all this emphasis on money seems un-
christian the answer is that such objection has never
realized the seriousness of the present-day religious task.
Before the social atmosphere can be finally made Chris-
tian the churches will probably have to turn their build-
ings over to school room purposes for religious education
by experts all the days of the week. All of this at great
cost. Why? Simply because there is no other way, —
and the work must be done.

CHAPTER VI

THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR

The schemes for more adequate church advance almost
all contemplate the accumulation of funds in the power
of the Church which will have to be put into investment.
Enthusiastic leaders of interdenominational programs
talk of enormous buildings in New York City which by
their very height will at least symbolize to the world
something of the importance of Protestantism. Funds
are to be gathered for all varieties of endowments. Ed-
ucational equipments, hospitals, institutional churches
are to draw upon endowments abundantly adequate, and
retired preachers and teachers are to be supported from
the income of investments.

Of course the social radicals protest against the income
from any endowment funds. Such radicals insist that
a worker is entitled to the full produce of his labor, and
that interest payments are a tribute exacted from the
laborer by those fortunate enough to hold legal title to
the invested funds. Interest is unearned by the hold-
ers of bonds and other securities.

We do not believe that such assailants of income from
investments have ever made out their case. There is
something of social service in the accumulation of funds
to be used productively even though we cannot accu-
rately indicate the limits of the service. The ability to
get money together and to keep money together may be
a social virtue. When we reflect upon the almost in-

76

THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 77

evitable tendency of money to get away from the ordi-
nary man we must concede at least a measure of justifi-
cation of return from funds in the social service rendered
in the gathering of the funds and in their conservation.
This, of course, is not intended as an exoneration of
exorbitant or dishonest returns, nor is it intended as
justification for saddling on industry the burden of mak-
ing profits for "water" or monopoly values. It is
against these last that the socialist attack has unerring
pertinence.

But to carry the reflection a little farther, suppose
some species of state socialism should descend upon us
over night. The new order would find itself in the pres-
ence of accumulated funds now being used for religious
purposes. The cry might at once arise for the outright
confiscation of such funds. Let us suppose that the
funds should thus be confiscated. If Society understood
itself it would shortl}^ find that it would have to set apart
from the social income for just such purposes as the
philanthropic and religious agencies had been serving
amounts equal to the returns yielded by the confiscated
endowments. For the resources of which we are speak-
ing in this essay are thought of as devoted to genuine
social purposes, — purposes without whose realization so-
ciety would quickly find itself at a serious loss.

The critic urges, however, that under such socialism
society itself would be the authority in the disposition
of the social income and not ecclesiastical officials. This
may be true, but forthwith a host of vexatious questions
spring upon us. The organ of society as a whole is the
State. If the churches have to look to the State for
appropriations to religious enterprises the old vexed
question of the relation of Church and State is with us

78 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

again. Moreover, deplore it as we may, the tendency of
our time is toward questioning distrust of State manage-
ment. We may be doubtful whether if socialism comes
it will be state socialism. The State may indeed own
some basic resources of the country. Many such re-
sources might properly be nationalized, — mineral and
forest riches, irrigation and water power streams, in-
dustries like the railroads which are vital to the life of
the nation as such. A legitimate argument can be made
for such nationalization, but not much of an argument in
the light of present-day experience for the management
of such enterprises by the State itself. State handling
of economic instruments is liable to be choked by red
tape, or smothered in the dust of bureaucracies. The
centralization of power involved in such management is
so complete that the people fear the State and hedge it
about with all possible checks and restraints. In the
new order Society would probably have to hand over to
the churches sums of money to be used by the churches
themselves.

We adm-it that we have not yet squarely met the so-
cialistic attack on interest. The socialist holds that if
society were directly taxed for religious and philan-
thropic purposes the tax would be paid by those better
able to pay it than are the laborers out of whose earn-
ings the socialist declares that interest now comes. We
think that the argument here tells more heavily against
some forms of dividends than against interest, — interest
being more in the open, seldom rising to more than five
per cent, and ordinarily going more directly to reward
thrift than does the return from stocks. The unearned
increment, strictly speaking, docs not figure here. The
burden of proof is on the socialist. We cannot see that

THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 79

he has made out his case against interest, — except in-
terest on "water" and on properties accumulated un-
socially. It would indeed be a grim joke to have any
set of workers reproducing in interest every twenty
years a sum equal to the principal of a gain originally
acquired unsocially or anti-socially. In other days the
foundations of some fortunes which have held together
for centuries were laid in piracy, or slave-trade, or the
sale of alcoholic liquors, or in food-adulteration. Is it
not bracing to think of the interest returns on such
fortunes, and of what they amount to in the course of
an heir's life-time ? But even this is not quite conclusive.
Apart from the question as to the genesis of a fortune is
the question as to the use to which the fortune is now
being put.

The most attractive theory of socialism to-day is gild-
socialism, in which Society is conceived of as united
under a federalist principle, with constituent groups
working according to their own genius and spirit. If
we ever arrive at such gild-socialism there is nothing to
forbid the prophecy that the Church will be conceived
of as one of the bodies of Society, ruling itself according
to its own law. Even under gild-socialism economic
gilds might make a modest return to the Church for
the privilege of using some of the Church's investment
funds. In any case if these are expended wisely the
expenditure will have to go forward under the initiative
of the Church itself, even if there is some checking and
supervising body outside. We could contemplate only
with dismay a socialistic regime under which a central
committee would allot to the constituent organizations
of Society the money to be spent by those societies with
detailed directions as to the manner of the spending.

80 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

If it be replied that state socialism has never yet any-
where had a fair chance, and that state socialism as we
have seen it is nothing but a plutocratic oligarchy work-
ing through the State forms, the just rejoinder is that
the fault of which we speak is inherent in the state-
socialistic system. Nothing in human experience sug-
gests that any central body of Society will be wise enough
to tell how the resources of the larger social groups shall
be expended. The ones who stand closest to the task
are those whose authority should be final, — until the
groups begin to make patent blunders. We say at times
that the man who uses the tool has rights over the tool
prior to the rights of all other persons whatsoever. This
is as true of big tools as of little, of instruments like
organizations as truly as of mechanisms which one man
can control. The experience of the user of the tool is
of first consequence in all plans of appropriations for
its use.

Furthermore some kind of control over ecclesiastical
funds by the Church will be necessary not merely to
guard the Church against the stupidity and dullness of
State bureaucracies but against the eccentricity and
aberration of occasional outbursts of popular sentiment.
Suppose we had a type of organization of society that
would put expenditures entirely in the hands of agencies
immediately responsible to the general popular will.
We are among those who long for the speedy democrat-
ization of all phases of social life, — ecclesiastical, educa-
tional, industrial. And yet if democratization fully
comes in all these circles the people themselves will have
to take steps to guard themselves against their own
excesses of sentiment. Social intoxication is just as
possible as individual intoxication, — and intoxication by

THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 81

a half-seized or half-understood idea is just as deadly
as intoxication by a drug. The foremost democrats of
history have indeed been those who have trusted most to
the people in the long run, but who have observed the
most thorough precautions against being influenced by
sudden bursts of popular sentiment. The most effective
popular leaders have oftentimes been those who have had
the liveliest horror of becoming too popular. IMoods in
a people are more serious than moods in an individual.
Panic in one hundred thousand men is more terrible
than panic in one man. So that if Society comes to
take possession of all the funds that have been accumu-
lated for endowment purposes, probably one of the first
steps will necessarily be the installation of a system of
checks to prevent the wasting of the funds in ill-consid-
ered projects.

Social reorganization, however, is not yet accomplished.
We are working under the present system and we shall
very likely have to work under that system through a
long future. Investments constitute a phase of the
moral problem which the Church has to face now. "What
principles must it follow in order to make the most
Christian use of its funds? We repeat that there is no
absolute standard which will settle this question by rule-
of-thumb. All we can do is to do the best possible
under sets of circumstances thrust upon us by the cur-
rent of events.

The Church need not lay itself open to the charge that
it passively accepts the income of investments without
rendering any service in the field in which the investment
is made. The severe charge against almost all investors
is that they look only at the regidarity and the security
of their returns, with no concern whatsoever for the

82 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

methods by which the business which yields the return
is managed. The Church shows itself worthy of its re-
sources by the uses to which it puts them. But it is
possible also for the Church to be deserving' of its money
by some moral supervisional responsibility for the en-
terprises which yield the return.

It ought not to be possible to bring the charge of
absenteeism against the Church. Suppose, for example,
that the Church receives by bequests farm lands, or that
it invests in farm lands. Its investment may mean noth-
ing more than lending money to be used in the cultiva-
tion of the soil. Inasmuch, however, as it appears with
money to lend, and inasmuch as enterprises are desirous
of proving attractive to it as a lender, it has a right at
least to know how the farming is carried on. Sometimes
the mere asking of questions leads to reforms. Has a
Church a right to lend money to a farmer who in this
day of worldwide food shortage abuses his land by un-
scientific methods? With food prices soaring to the
skies a Church agent might well insist that any money
lent through his instrumentality must go to those who
act under a regard for social morality. This suggestion
may indeed have for some its tinge of the humorous, —
because of the proverbial ignorance of churchmen as to
the actual ongoings of the world's rougher work. It
is related that a Church establishment in England was
once seized by a spasm of conscientiousness as to social
responsibility and sent a famous theologian forth to
observe how the Church lands were being farmed.
"That's a fine field of potatoes," said the theologian, as
he greeted the cultivator. The crushing reply was,
"Yon's turnips." But it is not necessary to send forth
theologians on such pilgrimages of inquiry. If absentee-

THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 83

ism is the charge brought against those who merely re-
ceive returns without any service to the properties which
produce the returns, this charge can be met by a little
actual attention to the productive enterprise. We are
referring particularly to judgment of undertakings by
reference to the human and moral standards of which
the Church can speak with authority.

Two suggestions pertinent here have recently been
put forward by socially-minded thinkers. Miss Vida
Seudder, a leading socialist of the more orthodox stamp,
has insisted that the next step in the moralization of
industry is the preparation of what she calls a "white
list" of investments, to be patronized by those anxious
not merely to make money but to see their money help on
toward a better industrial day. The investments on the
white list would be enterprises living up to the best
light obtainable as to methods for conducting business
not only without social loss but with the heaviest gain to
the community. Another socially-minded leader, pro-
fessor in a prominent theological school, has suggested
that the faculty of his school express to the trustees their
conviction that the funds from which professors' salaries
are paid should be subjected to the closest scrutiny to
determine the usefulness of the investments for the
nobler interests of Society, and that the professors show
themselves willing to stand any loss made necessary by
investment in the socially better enterprises. It is only
as propositions of this kind are taken seriously that the
Church will do its whole duty in the humanization and
Christianization of modem industry.

If we were to prepare such a white list what would
be some of the requisites upon which the Church would
have to insist? To begin with it would have to put it-

84 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

self against all investments yielding a suspiciously large
return. Such returns are ordinarily the result of specu-
lation or of monopoly control. In neither class of in-
vestments has the Church a right to deal. It is obvious
also that it would be the plain duty of the Church to
steer clear of entanglement in any anti-social business.
The churchman must always beware of the subtle self-
sophistications which are possible when questionable in-
vestments are up for discussion. I once knew a church
located near a famous race-track, — the race-track being
the scene of the most notorious betting in the United
States. The church got a considerable part of its finan-
cial strength from establishing eating places to minister
to the betting crowds. It was altogether amazing to see
how hard it was to convince the members of that congre-
gation that the evils of betting on horse races were any-
thing more than incidental and casual. From the view-
point of these alert churchmen the important fact about
horse racing was that it improved the breed of horses.
Of course it was proper for a divine institution to relieve
the hunger of those engaged in such a commendable voca-
tion as the improvement of the breed of horses. An in-
vestigation of the ownership of some commercial products
now on the market, whose social value is of a dubious
quality, might be rather surprising. It will not do for
the Church to take unqualifiedly the ground that any and
all investments which are legally permissible are proper
in ecclesiastical ethics.

To be even more specific the Church contradicts all
its social teaching if its money goes to keep alive enter-
prises which are not unquestionably honest. Suppose
any of the money of the Church aids in the manufacture
of consumers' goods, by which we mean food or clothing

THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 85

or shelter. AVhat virtue can there be in devoting to the
cause of the Lord the proceeds from the sale of foods
which are adulterated, or of garments which are shoddy,
of from the rent of tenements which lack adequate air
and light space? When we start on this course, how-
ever, there seems hardly to be any end. If we are to
be thorough-going we must consider the conditions under
which the workman performs his daily task, — the hours
of his labor, such questions as double shift and the rela-
tion of fatigue to efficiency. It is a travesty upon the
Gospel itself for the Church to invest money in businesses
which make it impossible for the workmen in those en-
terprises ever to have a chance at the blessings of re-
ligion for themselves. If, however, we can get a white
list of investments — one that is white and not white-
washed— a service can be rendered present-day industry
by holding up socially-minded interests to public ap-
proval.

It may seem to some that this theme is not worthy of
a separate chapter but such criticism is near-sighted.
"We spoke in a previous chapter of the function in society
of those who spend money. Even more important is the
function of those who invest money. The investor be-
comes a sharer in the responsibility for the enterprise.
He is a part producer. His aid is sought to put en-
terprises upon a paying basis. He is therefore measura-
bly responsible for the social consequences which flow
forth from the enterprises in which he invests.

We said at the beginning that we had no expectation
that the present industrial order will soon be so changed
as to make unlikely the return from invested funds.
After such a declaration we must be on our guard lest
we forget that these invested funds do much to tie up

86 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

the Church to the existing industrial order. As the total
of the accumulations increases we shall be brought even
more closely face to face with a peril for Christianity.
The possession of interest-bearing bonds and of perfectly
legitimate mortgages gives the Church a stake in the con-
tinuance of interest producers. One point, we repeat,
where private property is to-day violently attacked is on
the return of money to lenders in the form of interest.
Few social critics now object to a man's being allowed
to accumulate money for service rendered and to use
that money during his own lifetime as he pleases. What
the critics object to is such an accumulator's receiving
pay when he lends the money. The shock that this
criticism gives us as we listen to it shows us how much
of a hold the capitalistic system has taken on our minds.
It will not harm us to be occasionally treated to such
shocks.

Christianity places its emphasis on human and divine
values. Believing as we do that the Church has the
right to a moderate return from money invested in so-
cially beneficial enterprises, we would protest against
this right's being so used as to check debate on the vir-
tues or vices of the present industrial order. One glory
of Christianity has been that it has developed an atmos-
phere in which all such themes could be freely discussed.
Sad will be the day for the Church if property rights
attain to priority over human rights. The Church is
only safe with great resources in its possession when it
recognizes the dangers implicit in that possession. Let
not any one cry out against such a study of dangers.
One preventive against devastating revolution is the
elimination of abuses which make for revolution. The
only way to correct evils is to see them as they are. I

THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 87

am not a Socialist, but I believe that the most pungent
criticism of capitalism comes from the socialists. It is
ignorant and unchristian foolhardiness not to listen to
such criticism.

And by the way, speaking of socialism, it will not be
very effective to declaim against the manifold and serious
weakness of state socialism as long as the present capital-
istic system is open to like attack at the same points. I
do not think that socialism of the thorough-going variety
has ever yet met the question as to its effect on family
life ; but with low ideals of the family at one end of the
present social scale, and with no opportunity for true
family conditions at the other our criticism of socialism
is estopped in advance. It is doubtful if a state social-
istic scheme would fully call out the extraordinary tal-
ents of individuals, but with so much potential ability
smothered by the present order we are prevented from
taking advantage of this criticism. There seems to me
no way to eradicate from socialism the possibilities of
vested interests even if they might not be financial —
nepotisms, personal pulls and all that evil brood — but
this arouses the rejoinder — would they be any worse than
those of capitalism? What about free speech under so-
cialism? Would the publication of anti-socialistic books
be possible or permissible? And the socialist mocks us
with, — What about free speech now? And what of the
Malthusian possibility that under the assumed prosperity
of socialism, with the prudential check of the fathers'
having to care for the children removed, the race may
so increase as to bring horrible pressure on food supply ?
Here the socialist rails at us with bitter laughter, point-
ing to labor conditions in which under capitalism heed-
less and dejected masses simply spawn up to the limit

88 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

of the strength of the women. "When socially-minded
economists like Alfred Marshall, one of the greatest
thinkers of our time, quietly reminds the socialists that
to rush past difficulties in the path of reform is not to
solve them, the socialists shout forth the urgency of
human needs. No! socialism has never yet heeded
searching scrutiny simply because it is so easy for the
socialist to point scornfully at faults in the existing or-
der against which the critic warns in socialism. The
best tactic for capitalism in the fight with extreme so-
cialism is to hearken to the criticism of socialism upon
capitalism.

The peril in handling huge funds is that of becoming
capitalistically minded. It may seem odd, even funny,
to fancy that a group of men — no one of whom has him-
self a salary of more than six-thousand dollars a year —
are at all likely to influence the Church by being capital-
istically minded. These men by the very seriousness of
their responsibilities are likely to be scrupulously and
painstakingly honest. They announce themselves as
committed to most conservative management. Yet just
here is the peril, — the fear of losing a little money in
running a risk for a liimian value. There can be no
question as to the unselfishness of the investing agents
themselves. The modern business world, however, has
its own code of ethics, — rules and maxims and unwritten
order. Paradoxical as it may sound, the close observance
of these rules may link the Church up with a system
which is not squarely in harmony with the Gospel of
Jesus. The Church may conceivably be called upon to
entertain propositions which may not be popular in the
business world. The trustees of the Church funds hear
such policies discussed by the men of the world. There

THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 89

is no question of wrong intent on anybody's part, — none
of the money is to go to anybody's private pocket, — but
the atmosphere generated by some such discussion is not
that which makes for freedom in the consideration of
measures having to do with vital human and spiritual
interests. There are some things in this world which do
not naturally belong together. There was a sound in-
sight in the Old Testament which made it evident that
David was not the fit person to build the Temple be-
cause he had been so much a man of war. So far as we
recall no prophet condemned David's wars in the Old
Testament days, but there was something incongruous in
the very idea of a warrior's building the Temple. We
do not intend to suggest any inescapable likeness be-
tween modern business and war, — though something
could be said for such a resemblance. We hazard the
guess that the atmosphere of the present-day stock market
is not irresistibly conducive to the mood of prayer.

All this to one side, however, it is the very legitimacy
of many financial connections that creates a peril for
the Church. If Church wealth had not come as gifts, out
of a spirit of self-sacrifice, or if it were not invested in
enterprises so proper in themselves the danger might be
less. It is possible to make an argument for an entire
social system on the basis of some obviously excellent fea-
tures of that system. And these excellent features do
tend to rivet the Church to one type of industrial order.
It requires skillful leadership when a system of many
outstanding excellences is under fire to prevent a Church
which has connections with that system from identifying
with the system itself the human and spiritual standards
for which the Church exists. Good as many features of
the social order of any day may be these features are

90 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

after all but secondary to the main purpose for which
the Church is here. The only basis on which we may
safely grant to organizational church groups the measure
of autonomy which we to-day concede, is that the merely
organizational features shall be kept so firmly in the
instrumental category that the Church can conceivably
make its adjustment to a changed order, especially an
order changed for the better, without loss of precious
months or years. The Church should be one of the con-
servative forces in that it should hold back Society from
slipping away from the human ideals. It should not be
conservative in being so tied up to any industrial scheme
that that connection itself will by a hair's weight limit
the freedom of the Church in enforcing the Christian
program. If it is dangerous to have the Church too
closely dependent on the State, no matter how excellent
the State may be, it is more dangerous to have the
Church too closely identified even with the excellent fea-
tures of an industrial and social order. Property rights,
even if the rights are in properties legitimately earned
and used, must not make too much of an argument for
themselves as over against human rights.

CHAPTER VII

THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER

We must next consider the Church as an employer of
human agents through whom it does its work. The treat-
ment naturally divides itself into two parts, the relation
of the Church to its own ministers and teachers, and to
its other distinctively religious workers ; and the relation
to the increasing hundreds of laborers who carry on the
activities required by the Church in its capacity as owner
of productive properties.

The argument is often urged against any elaborate
discussion of remuneration to the distinctively religious
agents of the Church that the Church is under no ob-
ligation to pay these workers according to the scales or
standards observed in the business world. Christian
service, according to this notion, is self-sacrifice, and all
notion of adequate pay as the world thinks of adequacy,
is out of place. Now there is indeed a sense, as we shall
soon indicate, in which the Church should not observe
too strictly the so-called business standards. To urge,
however, that Christian sacrifice implies that preachers
and teachers and nurses and visitors of the poor are to
be underpaid is somewhat to miss the inner secret of the
New Testament doctrine of cross-bearing. The central
idea in the New Testament is that work is not to be per-
formed with a selfish intent, or with emphasis on gain
for one's self. The Church must, indeed, guard against
the possibility of even the unintentional creation of posts
of worldly privilege. Ministers, priests, bishops, presi-

91

92 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

dents, secretaries, — whatever the title, all must hold place
without any claim whatsoever except that of efficient
service. But this efficiency is ill-important. In its
dealing with its workers, even if it does not think over-
much of the welfare of the workers themselves, the
Church must give heed to the effectiveness with which
they discharge their tasks.

In some ears the word ''effectiveness" has a secular
sound. If necessary we can use some other word; the
only question is whether the work of the Church shall
be done well or ill. Even if the Church could be justi-
fied, as certainly it cannot be, in maintaining that Chris-
tian sacrifice implies that it is to pay scant attention to
the workers so far as their own personal welfare is con-
cerned, the Church could never be justified for not so
treating its servants as to help them to success in their
service.

Glance for a moment at the proposal in many denom-
inations to bestow pensions on ministers and teachers
who have given their best years to religious occupations.
With some arguments in behalf of such pensioning the
churchman becomes impatient. He may not have kept
close enough to the modern social drift to see that pen-
sions are simple justice toward the workers themselves.
But there is another angle of view. One stimulus to
successful work is the possibility of casting one's self
wholly into a task without worry for the future. If
the worker feels that in the days to come, when his
strength has lessened, the Church will make provision
for him so that he need not trouble himself over per-
sonal cares his power is increased. It is all very fine
for the Church to praise the men who can throw them-
selves wholly into their tasks; but it must do its part

THE CIIUKCH AS EMPLOYER 93

to make such self-forget fulness possible. Mankind will
likely not be saved except by such abandon. Here is
something of the secret of the hold of the Roman Cath-
olic organization on its servants, — and something of the
secret also of the self-abandonment Itself with which
those servants do their work. It is true that through
the vows of celibacy the Roman priests are forbidden to
take on themselves family cares, but even so, some of
the efficiency of the priests lies in their knowledge that
the Church will always care for them. There is an
obligation on every denomination to make it possible
for religious workers to plunge completely into their
tasks.

But there is a problem prior to this of providing for
the workers' old age, — the problem of the best training
of the workers of the Church for their fields. Here
again there is some force in the argument that the
Church should not spend largely just to give ministers
the advantages of scholarly culture. The ideal servant
of the Church finds joy in service itself. He has abund-
ant opportunity, indeed, to explore the world of books
and the world of men as others do not. The enjo^^ment
of such privileges throws upon the minister heavy re-
sponsibility, but the Church does not open doors to these
privileges just for the benefit of the worker himself.
The aim is to get the work done. It is much the fashion
in this pragmatic day to disparage the more strictly
intellectual training, but it is noticeable that the prag-
matists themselves develop to the utmost whatever brain
powers they possess, for the sake of showing that brain
power is not the chief path to knowledge. In the ages
covered by the Scriptural revelation stress was laid upon
training by study and reflection as a serious response to

94 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

a divine call. The equipment was, of course, not al-
ways in the schools, but in one exercise or another proph-
ets and apostles and seers learned how to think. Cor-
rect thinking does not come by nature, but by the most
rigorous self-discipline, — self-discipline from which
Jesus and Paul were not exempt. The minister of God
who undertakes to explain God to men should, with all
due allowance for exceptions, be the mind of most ex-
tensive general culture in the community. While it is
entirely possible for the spirit of God to speak through
the lips of uncultivated and ignorant disciples, the spirit
of God seldom does so speak. It is true that Jesus chose
his disciples outside the formal schools of his day but it
also is true that he insisted that they go to school to
himself. Frequently we hear protests agains a stern
mental regimen for Christian workers on the ground
that Jesus chose his lieutenants from among unlettered
fishermen. The protest sometimes seems to assume that
the disciples were at the beginning ignoramuses, utterly
forgetting that a man cannot be much of a fisherman
and much of an ignoramus at the same time. Jesus
chose the men who had lived close to the elementary
factors of nature and of life, and then pressed them to
the severity of his own spiritual discipline.

Before those who leap to an opposite extreme and
speak as if the disciples at the start were wise enough to
go forth as Christian teachers, we place the long months
of training which Jesus gave his disciples, and we point
out that the recorded utterances of the disciples before
their training was complete are significant mostly as
revelations of the enormity of the task before the
Teacher. The training of Jesus for himself and for his
disciples was long and hard. The story of the tempta-

THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 95

tion of the Master implies that the suggested programs
as to messianic procedure were considered on their merit,
and repulsed not by impulse or by sentiment but by
earnest thought. To what were the years of Paul which
first followed his conversion devoted? Did Paul retire
into the desert solely for physical recuperation? Did
he not set himself at least through parts of three years
to the strain of tense wrestling with intellectual as well
as spiritual difficulties?

The Church has a right by high spiritual eminent do-
main to claim for its service the ablest intellects whom it
can reach for service in all fields. But if the power of
its servants is to be chiefly intellectual they would better
remain in the spheres where that power can be most
completely developed, unless the Church is prepared to
utilize trained minds to the utmost. "Which is better for
Society, a skilled surgeon laboring for the Church with
imperfect instruments, or remaining in private practice
and working with the best that Society can supply
to an expert of the most adequate training? The
proper answer is that the Church should stand for the
finest training and the amplest opportunities at the same
time that it bestows upon the surgeon an impulse and a
dynamic which may never fully appear in private prac-
tice.

The Church must not trifle with brains. They are too
scarce. I was once meeting in interviews the students
of a foremost university who were considering fields of
life work. A young man came forward who had shown
astonishing knack in the investigation of the ductless
glands of the human body. He had been deeply im-
pressed by the appeal of some Christian recruiting agent
who had declared to him that it was his duty to abandon

96 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

glands for theology. Assuming that tlie young student
was gifted for such important scientific research the
ideal message of the Church for him would have been
that it had unparalleled fields for just the service which
he could render; that it was prepared at whatever cost
to make his service of the best. If this could not
honestly be said he should have been urged to carry his
talents wherever they would have suitable opportunity.

The Kingdom of God and of Humanity is to-day so
in need of specialized intellectual power that in some
cases everything else should give way before an oppor-
tunity for the exercise of that definite extraordinary
ability. Would it have been right for the Church to
say to such a volunteer as the above, "Go to a theological
school ; take the courses there and then enter into the
routine of the ministry"? Not unless the candidate
showed signs of an ability for the ministry at least equal
to those he showed for science. It is the duty of the
Church to help station brain power where it can work
best.

In all this it must be remembered that the Church
must not carry over into its estimate of its workers
every standard that rules in the business world. The
same persons who often insist that church work is self-
sacrificing service will often likewise insist that strictly
business standards be applied to the Christian worker's
accomplishment. The Church cannot excuse loose and
slovenly workmanship, but there are some business
standards which are distinctively out of place in spiritual
enterprises.

A number of years ago an energetic educational board
tried to set up scales for intellectual energies in the
colleges and universities of this country. The problem

THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 97

was handled so mechanically through reliance upon time
schedules and units of measurement as quickly to bring
the scheme into ridicule. Rules for creative excellence
cannot be phrased exactly. This is even more true with
spiritual than with academic leadership. Creative
power arises out of long hours of patient brooding, ut-
terly untrammeled by scheduled formulas. To an ex-
tent, to be sure, a church can be run as a business. But
the requirements of the business routine must halt at
the door of the prophet's study. So of estimating a
prophet's worth by stati^ical outcome.. While it is
highly suspicious if a minister or teacher toils on through
years with no statistical result, nevertheless the emphasis
on statistics as such is deadly for lofty prophetic utter-
ance. If the accounts of the ministry of Jesus in the
New Testament are at all complete some items must be
disconcerting to the lovers of figures. There was a lack
of follow-up methods in the preaching of Jesus. It
would have been distressing for the statistical church-
man to have heard the Master conclude his parables with
the abrupt word: ''He that hath ears to hear, let him
hear"; and then to have seen him pass on without stop-
ping to appoint a committee to conserve results.

It is impossible for the Church to enter far into en-
terprises which involve the investment of millions of
dollars without an inevitable increase in secretarial and
bureau officials. These officials are indispensable, but
they are prone to exaggerate their own importance as
compared with that of the men who are set apart to be
the prophets of the Church. The layman who is him-
self successful in secular business is not nearly so likely
to judge a preacher by an artificial business criterion as
is a Church bureaucrat in charge of an organizational

98 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

enterprise. In a recent campaign for immense funds
in one of the important denominations of the country,
the secretarial force at the head of the campaign sketched
out a program of themes which the preachers were to
discuss through a period of four months. If the preach-
ers had followed the scheme they would have spoken
once every Sunday and once every midweek for four
months on themes suggested by practically secular or-
ganizational officials. That many preachers of rather
moderate intellectual capital were grateful for such help
should not blind any one's eyes to the tendency of
secretarial functions of this sort to strike at the heart of
living prophecy in the Church. Inevitably the officials
of a bureau come to appraise the utterances of preachers
by some statistically tangible harvest. There is matter
for serious reflection in the fact that the greatest Ameri-
can preachers are less often found in the pulpits of the
highly centralized denominations than in those of more
independent congregational organization. Could Horace
Bushnell or Henry Ward Beecher or Phillips Brooks have
worked easily under tightly centralized control?

Beyond all this is the absolute necessity upon the
Church of allowing a preacher to speak his mind on the
important social questions of the day. To the credit
of the Christian churches it must be said that the at-
tempts at direct repression of free speech in pulpits have
been very few, when the number of pulpits in the land
is taken into consideration. But there is altogether
too much repression by indirection, — questioning the
judgment of the speaker, or damning him with faint
praise. Whether the devotees of modem business meth-
ods can make anything of it or not the obligation is upon
the Christian Church to see that the prophet has his

THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 99

chance. If this is not granted the spirit of prophecy-
finds utterance outside the Church. We may not know
much about the Almighty's plans for the uplift of the
world but we can be perfectly sure that He does not
intend to leave Himself without a witness. The pro-
phet's voice must be heard above all the clicking of the
typewriters of secretaries and treasurers.

It is possible for the Church, by too much considering
secular points of view, to make itself the dupe and tool
of self-centered business interests. We have no desire to
be harsh, but some such interests seldom speak forth their
underlying reason for action. As an instance, think of
the denunciation of the Bolshevist system of Russia by
commercial leaders a few months ago. The emphasis was
on Bolshevism's alleged attacks upon religion and the
family and the moral basis of Society. Stirred by pic-
tures of Society's peril churchmen waxed fiercely elo-
quent and business leaders applauded : the eloquence and
the applause, it must be confessed, frequently varying in-
versely with the exactness of the knowledge of the Russian
enigma. The course of events seems to be quieting the
fears of many business men as to the loss of money in-
vested in Russia ; and when it becomes possible to enter
into trade with Bolshevism much Business will be ready.
We are certainly not arguing against trade with Russia,
but what of the influence of Bolshevism on the Family
and the State and the Church? Church officials who
blaze out against Bolshevism may find Commerce and
Finance lukewarm or cold as soon as Business enters into
paying commerce with Russia. This does not mean dia-
bolical cunning on the part of the commercial agents but
it does suggest the wisdom of not leaning too heavily on
such backers for steady support of a moral truth, or per-

100 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

haps of not leaping too precipitately to the side of Busi-
ness when Business poses as a moral crusader.

The second part of this chapter has to do with the
employment of labor by Church enterprises. If any one
thinks that this is an item of slight importance let him
remember that the greater American denominations all
have publishing houses, — with a total volume of busi-
ness reaching many millions a year. The sincerity of the
professions of the Church toward the welfare of labor is
revealed by the attitude of Church toward labor in such
enterprises. Inasmuch as there is no absolute standard
that can govern all specific cases the policy of the Church
should be to keep its labor program as advanced as pos-
sible. Only thus can the Church do its part in making
dynamically effective the unselfish motives in industry.
If such motives are not made eflfeetive even material pro-
duction begins to fall off. If the Church wishes to bind
the labor world to the ideal of service let it show itself
ready to serve the labor world.

Everywhere to-day we hear utterances in favor of col-
lective bargaining. If the Church sincerely believes in
collective bargaining the place to avow her belief is in her
own bargains with her laborers. The most familiar
form of collective bargaining is through trade unions.
We do not pretend to enter a sweeping endorsement of
labor-unions. JMany of them have been guilty of grave
mistakes. But any man who has eyes open to the history
of labor knows that about all the improvement which
has been made anywhere in labor conditions has come
through the campaigns of the labor-unions. The con-
tempt of the trade-unionist for the scab is hard to com-
prehend, unless we think of the trade-union as fighting
the battle for all grades of labor, non-union as well as

THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 101

union. The non-unionist eats of the fruits of the victory
of the trade-union without paying any of the cost of the
victory. We cannot restrain something of the same feel-
ing for the non-union laborer who fights against union
labor that we have for a citizen in the community who
will never give to a Church enterprise, but who readily
avails himself of all the advantages which come into the
community through the moral effectiveness of the
Church. A certain anti-union employer in charge of a
big business used to pride himself on the fact that while
he would not at all recognize unionism, he gave his em-
ployees all the privileges as to hours and wages which
union men received. It is not recorded that he ever ran
in advance of the union in the bestowal of such privileges.
His employees, indeed, were even encouraged to hold
their heads high, as over against union members, but they
were enjoying the fruits of the struggle of the members of
the unions.

It must be admitted that unions at times have been
brutal. They have resorted to force when there has
been not the slightest justification for force. They have
put through coercive measures in contradiction to a
spirit of liberty. Their leaders have declared industrial
wars without sufficiently counting the cost. But when
all is said the unions have fought a battle for human
rights and have pushed the world on toward better con-
ditions for the laboring masses everywhere. Most flour-
ishes by churchmen about standing against unions to
preserve the liberty of the individual laborer are based
on sheer ignorance. The only expedient by which the
individual laborer can be secure in his liberties is through
cooperation with his fellows. We do not pretend to say
just what form collective bargaining should take in this

102 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

or that trade, for unionism is not the only form, but we
do say that if any question in social theory is closed
it is the question as to collective bargaining. To ask
whether a man should have a right to join an associa-
tion of his fellow laborers to help on the cause of
labor is about as rational as to ask whether a man should
have a right to join a church to help on the cause of the
Kingdom of God. There may be situations in which one
should not bind oneself to a collective group of laborers,
or of religionists. But in the main the principle of col-
lective action holds good in both fields. In dealing with
this issue it would be a help if all who are in positions
of responsibility would inform themselves more fully as
to the history of gains for humanity made by labor as-
sociations in spite of the lukewarmness and even the
hostility of the Church. It is an encouraging sign that
the Church is so markedly changing its attitude toward
the forces at work in the labor world.

In meeting with the laborer the Church official will do
well to avoid anything savoring of patronizing con-
descension. That the Church is engaged in a holy and
sacred task does not give it the right to patronize any-
body. In spite of all mistakes in the past the Church
to-day is not suffering from direct hostility to the la-
borer. It is, however, afflicted somewhat with paternal-
ism,— that middle stage between hostility to the laboring
classes and respectful cooperation with them. But
paternalism is not a Christian attitude except toward
children. Paternalism is often more offensive to an in-
dependent laborer than is outright warfare. I once
visited the plant of a huge manufacturing concern which
never welcomed any suggestion or approach from its
laborers for any reason whatsoever. The employing cor-

THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 103

poration thought of itself as exceedingly humane because
it had built a spacious dining-hall in which the men
might eat the lunches that their wives brought to them
at tne noon hour. For some perverse reason the men
preferred to eat on the curbstones rather than to accept
the benevolence of the corporation. The manufacturers
declared that they were almost without hope of ever
Americanizing these workers. If they had known any-
thing about Americanism they would have recognized
that unwdllingness to accept favors from the hands of a
patronizing institution was a good first step toward
Americanization, — at least it was a step toward a gen-
uinely Christian independence. And there is about
paternalism a tendency to quick descent to some forms
of industrial meanness when the size of a plant so
increases as to make personal contact between employer
and employed impossible: for example, the open ear to
tattlers and tale-bearers and the use of informers.

Independence, self-respect, self-determination, loyalty
to an ideal of service, — these are the Christian virtues
which the Church ought to fosler in all its contact with
the laboring man. In this sphere the Church must not
too boldly set itself up to judge what is good for the
laboring man apart from the judgment of the man him-
self. One of the inherent weaknesses of a religious in-
stitution is its proneness to make claim for a special
authority in realms where more secular agencies have
equal right to an opinion. The Church is commissioned
to stand uncompromisingly for the human values.
Among those values is freedom — and it is absurd to
think that a Church can tell a mass of laborers what their
freedom calls for. If they are free they will do the
calling. The Church has, indeed, a right to its opinion

104 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

on any proposed industrial changes ; it has a right to
its own freedom as over against the compulsion of any
group, — capitalists or laborers. But this means that in
the end all groups must meet on the basis of mutual re-
spect and talk things through. And this justifies posi-
tions on controlling boards of church manufacturing
enterprises for representatives of labor chosen by the
laborers themselves.

The Church must be much on its guard against its
leaders who make for it claims of authority of any
arbitrary sort when thej' are handling a labor problem.
The lamentable truth is that to-day the labor world in
general looks upon the Church as its foe. The Church
is not nearly so hostile as the labor world imagines. It
is certainly not more ignorant about Labor than is La-
bor about the Church : and it is doing much to work
away from the mood of noisy aulhoritativeness and into
the mood of quiet influence. This, of course, brings the
problem around to the necessity of the give-and-take of
open discussion in a democratic community. A most de-
cisive factor in increasing the influence of the Church
will be just its willingness to treat its own laborers ac-
cording to the most advanced standards which it can
agree upon in face-to-face discussion with them. That
it is a Church and that it makes uo profits for itself does
not relieve it from the responsibility of going just as far
as is possible under the present system to grant its
workers the terms whieli make for self-determination by
those workers themselves. Advanced economic theory
uttered in resolutions by religious conferences and as-
semblies is good for the enlightenment of the church
constituency, b\Jt economic practice is the only thing that
counts with the labor world.

CHAPTER VIII

MISSIONARY EFFORT AND FINANCIAL. POLICY

"Within the past half-dozen years the missionary plans
for carrying the Gospel to non-Christian nations have
taken on immensely enlarged scope. The World War
itself has done something to open the eyes of Chris-
tendom to the urgency of a serious attempt to save the
whole world. Moreover the proposal for a League of
Nations, especially with its provisions for mandatories
by the so-called more favored nations over the less fav-
ored, has lent new meaning to a trusteeship on the part
of Christendom for non-Christendom. Again, the sheer
size of the present plans has brought the captains of
unified church movements into such close touch with
captains in political and financial circles that the re-
ligious leaders are now talking with the same sweep of
terms as the political and industrial magnates.

In general this increase of size in our program of mis-
sionary effort is good, but there are possibilities of the
Church's getting too intimate with political and in-
dustrial schemes. It may be well to glance for a moment
at the Christian method of missionary endeavor. We
would not deny the spread of civilization that accom-
panies the progress of many of the more secular agencies
which work with non-Christian nations, but our new
sums of money and our new relationships to industrial
leaders are not good for us unless we recall repeatedly
the Christian aim of missionary effort and the Christian
method of that effort.

The ethics of method itself has not received enough at-

105

106 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

I

tention from Christian moralists. We have laid stress
on judging courses by their outcomes, — especially as we
speak of the larger groups of people are we likely to
declare that any policy which yields a right result must
itself be right. We are cautioned not to be too exacting
about means if the manifest outcome is the betterment of
hundreds of thousands or even of millions of human be-
ings. A fallacy lurks here, however. Some ways of
producing results are more Christian than others. When
an advanced nation is treating with one more backward
we must try to get the point of view of that backward
nation, if we are to consider the moral effect of the
contact of the more favored nation with the less favored.
Take an illustration from international procedure which
has a bearing on all the present-day contacts of the
United States with Latin America, — missionary efforts
included. We refer to President Roosevelt's seizure of
territory for the Isthmian Canal. Some facts stand
forth at once, — the whole world needed the Canal, — the
building of the Canal was the duty of the United States,
— the object simply had to be attained. There is noth-
ing in the history of the revolution of Panama, however,
to compel us to believe that the United States could not
have attained her end by a less violent method. Even the
Latin Americans themselves were ready to concede that
the United States must be granted the privilege of build-
ing the highway, — but no Latin American would praise
the means by which a route was secured.

There is here no insinuation that the President of the
United States employed any methods that seemed to him
dishonorable. He apparently forgot, however, that there
was before him the whole problem of the good feeling
between Anglo-Saxon America and Latin America. The

MISSIONARY EFFORT 107

abyss between the point of view of each of these two
racial types is deep enough in any event, — and nothing
should have been encouraged which would make that
abyss deeper. Now all talk by Christian leaders about
the possibilities of a new highway for the advance of
civilization and of Christianity must be qualified by the
recollection that the manner of preempting a site for the
highway worked, broadly speaking, against the spread
of Christianity. It may be a little early in the day to
prescribe rules for international good manners, but it is
permissible to ask if international bad manners have
not been and are not a hindrance to the spread of the
Gospel.

It seems hardly necessary to affirm that our expansive
schemes of missionary procedure to-day should not blind
us to the folly of all talk about the enlargement of the
Kingdom through wars of conquest. All that such phy-
sical means accomplish is physical. When the Church
leader countenances a war of conquest because of the
advantage which the conqueror will inevitably bring to
the conquered, he must not forget that such advantages
at best are most rudimentary. The conqueror can in-
deed impose police power; he can keep roads open to
traffic ; but the fact that the Christian nation is the ruler
of the non-Christian nation makes against spiritual
Christianization.

He would be rash who would deny that England has
done much for humanity in India. There have been in-
deed keen observers like Ramsay McDonald and the late
Keir Hardie who have declared that it is questionable
whether England's conquest of India has not on the
whole done India more harm than good. Making allow-
ance for the hostility of both these social leaders to

108 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

capitalistic imperialism and for the probability that they
were monopolized by the disgruntled natives in India,
we must recognize that their opinion is at least worth
listening to. England has given to India modern high-
ways, well-managed systems of railroads and canals and
some protection against famine. But England has done
this with demand that India pay the heavy interest
charges on the English money invested in public works.
McDonald and Hardie urge that this tax on India labor
has so depleted India's vitality as to render the natives
an easy prey to disease, in spite of all our scientific
advance in the knowledge of preventive medicine and
sanitation. "When we remember the wars in India be-
fore England came and the prevalence of thuggery and
infanticide we may well suspect that the unqualified con-
clusions of McDonald and Hardie are not warranted.
It is true nevertheless that England has not succeeded
in conquering the soul of India. India will not consent
that England stamp her banners on the India soul.
Trust as we may that an enlightened liberalism in Eng-
land will handle wisely the India situation, there is no
disguising the resentment of the Indians at the over-
lordship of the English.

We have heard missionaries assert that English ad-
ministration in India gives the Church a golden oppor-
tunity. The missionary can count on the friendly
cooperation of the government in efforts for the uplift
of the native. He can know that liis government is back
of him. Some shades of the significance of the bearing
of the Englishman's self-confidence on the Indian,
however, this optimistic speech overlooks. Any one who
has observed missionaries from an overlord nation at
work in a subject nation realizes how practically impos-

MISSIONARY EFFORT 109

sible it is to get the half-conscious or sub-conscious feel-
ing of overlordship out of the missionary's mind. The
missionary may expatiate with stirring eloquence on
human brotherhood, but the hint of mastery creeps into
his accent and gesture in spite of himself. And this
unconscious tinge of mastery tends to nullify the preach-
ing of the Gospel.

Besides this, the direct cooperation of the Church ajid
the over-ruling government ties up Christianity to a
secular system, in the opinion of the native. If this is
true with an empire which has had so long experience
with subject peoples as England has had, much more
would it be likely to be so with a country like the United
States. Those blazing patriots who are eager to see the
United States extend her influence, by conflict if neces-
sary, far down into Latin America, in the name of Chris-
tian civilization, would better remember that the Ameri-
can might be a more impatient master than the English.
The American's way of taking hold for uplift is likely
to resemble a quick seizure by the nape of the neck. It
does not render such uplift any more certain of success
to have a group of churchmen standing by to applaud.

Many devout Christians feel to-day that the commerce
of the more favored nations with the more backward is a
tremendous advantage for the spread of the Kingdom
of Heaven. The Christian casts his gaze on so-called
heathen lands and sees them stocked with material good
things, — with coal beds, with underground lakes of oil,
with soils rich in tropical fruits, and in rubber. He
beholds the native in abject poverty and he thrills with
a sincere desire to teach that native how to utilize the
wealth lying about so profusely. Thus far well and
good. If China's coal is to go principally to China, and

110 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

the return for Mexico's oil principally to INIexico, and
an equitable price for Central America's fruit to Central
America, and a fair remuneration for rubber to Africa
and South America, there can be little objection. Cap-
italism, as such, however, is not in business primarily
for missionary motives. Any aid that comes from cap-
italism in its direct dealing with the natives of a back-
ward country is more accidental than intentional. The
more intelligent of the natives in an exploited land know
this, and resent any coupling of philanthropic profession
with the exploitation of their resources. This is espe-
cially true where the coveted riches are treasures like
mines and oil wells which will sooner or later be forever
exhausted.

The representatives of an oil company with many,
many wells in Mexico recently testified before a United
States Governmental Commission as to their aims in the
development of Mexico. The testimony was freely in-
terspersed with expressions of good will toward the peo-
ple of Mexico and of deep sympathy with them in their
distresses. The Company avowed a willingness to co-
operate with the missionary societies in the uplift of
]\Iexico, to the extent of pouring millions of dollars
through the organized channels of the Church. One of
these witnesses, when questioned closely, declared that
armed intervention in Mexico was unthinkable. On
further questioning, however, the witness advised the
immediate withdrawal of recognition by the United
States from the constituted government of Mexico, the
cooperation of good people in the United States with
good people in INIexico to overthrow the existing Mexican
authority, the use of the na\'y of the United States to
blockade the ports of Mexico to further this philanthropic

MISSIONARY EFFORT 111

endeavor, and recognized the practical certainty that a
strong arm would have to be employed in Mexico itself
before all this could be brought about. Now what is the
effect of such a proposed union of imperialistic business
and Christian philanthropy on the Mexican mind? Of
course any such benevolent enterprises may be statisti-
cally successful. Numerous enough responses can be
secured in any community where donations of money
are involved. But the self-respecting Mexican turns
against the scheme with abhorrence. Any self-respect-
ing missionary would likewise spurn such proffers of
money with abhorrence, provided he knew what Chris-
tian missionary effort is.

We must be on watch also lest the handling of huge
amounts in missionary campaigning dim our eyes to the
difference between the advance of material civilization
and the advance of the Christian spirit. If Christianity
in our own land cannot be adequately phrased in ma-
terial terms it cannot be thus phrased in a non-Christian
land. It is almost impossible to travel through a non-
Christian land and not lose one's balance before the
omnipresent need of immediate physical relief. People
are so hungry and so sick that the first requisite seems
food and medicine. Indeed it would be a blessedly
Christian task to send hundreds of Christian physicians
among peoples that know not the meaning of hygiene
and sanitation, to say nothing of anaesthetic and aseptic
surgery. There is a limit, however, beyond which the
introduction of European and American civilization
ceases to be a virtue. The non-Christian world cer-
tainly stands in need of western science. But how far
will the missionary, with the ample material which he
will soon have, be justified in urging a western civiliza-

112 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

tion upon an oriental mind, or an Anglo-Saxon civiliza-
tion upon a Latin mind? The temptation here arises
not only out of the apparent pressing need but also out
of the passion for a quick result. i\Iaterial transforma-
tions can be more definitely reported than can the pa-
tient attempts to persuade the non-Christian to lay hold
of Christianity and to interpret it according to his own
character.

We have just begun to realize what a long road we
must travel to Christianize the world in a Christian
fashion. Spiritual Christianization starts by assuming
the freedom of the seeker after truth. Genuine freedom
means that Christianity is to be sought in the inner
spirit rather than to be put on from without. Suppose
China could receive enough material resources to cut
down her death rate, to banish the commoner diseases,
to adopt a higher standard of living, so that human ex-
istence would be richer than China has ever known.
Where would we be after all this had been attained?
We would be at the parting of the paths where if we
were foolish we would urge the Chinaman to go on and
adopt the entire mental habit of western civilization;
or whore if we were wise we would seek to persuade him,
with the grosser obstacles removed, to undertake an in-
terpretation of Christianity after his own mind.

It is one of the most absurd fancies to imagine that
the full possibilities of Christianity must be called forth
chiefly from an occidental soil. The matter-of-factness
of the mentality turned out by our modern industrial
existence is a check to the understanding of Christian-
ity. If Christianity is to be a world religion its genius
will have to be wrought out into manifold and altogether
diverse racial expressions. Is not the oriental closer to

MISSIONARY EFFORT 113

the quality of mind which was in Christ than is the oc-
cidental? If the oriental could be brought to Christ's
thought of God and to Christ's spirit toward his fellow-
man he would find in himself resemblances to the Christ
habit of mind which are all but impossible to the occi-
dental whose mental nature has been shaped by the
economic forces playing through western society. It
would be altogether ridiculous and mirth-provoking, if
it were not tragic, to contemplate the incongruity of
trying to fit the teachings of Jesus in detail into the
categories of European or American civilization. Re-
flect that any predominantly industrial mind must have
orderly plan. The mind of Jesus was indeed orderly
with the sublime rationality which arose from commun-
ion with the Source of all wisdom, but not orderly after
the crisp briskness of the modern teacher who arranges
his deliverances in one, two, three regularity. Jesus
seemed to play around the eternal conceptions with a
freedom and ease which are only for him who has the
secret of profound brooding.

I happen to know a foreign mission field in which the
questions and the answers in the Graded Bible Lessons
used in the United States are translated directly into
Spanish for pupils in a Latin American environment.
The result is sometimes grotesque and almost always un-
natural. What the Spanish American mind needs is to
develop its own Christian thinking in its own terms. I
know a Christian denomination which translates a book
of discipline, framed distinctly with American conditions
in mind, into foreign languages for converts in non-
Christian lands. This can be easily remedied. What
cannot be so easily remedied is the temper of mind begot-
ten under a western environment which, when intrusted

114 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

with large financial sums to be expended in missionary-
enterprises, casts about for some results which will be
instantaneously intelligible to the contributors of the
money, regardless of whether those results are secured at
the cost of the spiritual spontaneity of the peoples aided.

It would be well if the bustling and energetic mis-
sionary faring forth from a capitalistic home base could
be delivered from the tyranny of the clock. One of the
most harmful inventions for an occidental, working with
most non-Christian peoples, is the pocket time-piece.
"What the missionary needs is at least for a season to
have no time-schedule, — to steep himself in the mental
life of the man to whom he is ministering, in the hope
that that life itself may in turn seize the Gospel truth
and state it anew in Christian independence. Lest this
seem to be raving and nonsense let us remind ourselves
that it is at bottom a thoroughly scientific method capable
of wide application. Any teacher who strives to make
the most of his pupils and his subject matter proceeds
with most unbusinesslike irregularity. He refuses to be
cramped with a schedule. Instead of marching directly
upon his theme he wanders all around it. He drops
dynamic hints for the avid seizures of the young minds.
He is careful not to do too much himself. When he
discovers a pupil of first class talent his aim is to en-
courage that pupil to do the utmost without help. A
theory which he at the beginning announces to his stu-
dents from his own point of view may become from their
angle something utterly different. Thus it is that
scientific knowledge grows. The wisest teachers simply
scatter germinal ideas to their students with the com-
mand to harvest from the seeds what they can.

Likewise Christianity should be so placed before in-

MISSIONARY EFFORT 115

quiring nations that those nations may make what they
will of Christianity. That God is like Christ and that
man can be like Christ, — is the heart of the Christian
system. But around this center let the converts to
Christianity in non-Christian lands build whatever body
they will. Chinamen are not Anglo-Saxons with a yel-
low skin. Negroes are not white men with black pig-
ment. The Latin races are not Americans speaking
French or Spanish or Italian. The curse of a domineer-
ing civilization like our own is the impulse to force other
civilizations into its own mold. One strain on Christian-
ity will come when occidental Protestantism sees its
money spent for developments of Christianity which
seem widely foreign to the Christianity that we know.
Abraham Lincoln once said that the Lord must be fond
of plain people else He would not have made so many
of them. What irreverence to believe that the Lord
would have created the masses of humanity which are
still non-Christian if He had not cared mightily for them,
and if He had not beheld the rich religious contributions
which they would one day make to truth under the in-
spiration of the Christian spirit.

Akin to this general consideration is another which
must be kept in mind in the approaching day of the full
treasury. If we are to have an ultimate Christianity
to which all races are to make their spiritual contribution
we shall, as we have said, have to encourage those sepa-
rate races to work their problems through for themselves.
This means that all missionary effort should aim at
financial self-support by the benefited peoples just as
rapidly as that self-support can be developed. It may
seem cruel to declare that at times the administrator of
missionary funds should be willing to see a native worker

116 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

lacking equipment which contributions from outside
might readily secure. There will always be a province
here which can be wisely administered onlj'' by delicate
understanding. But it is clear that, except in those
initial stages where an enterprise is first being put upon
its feet, the material support of Christianity should
come chiefly from the converts themselves. It is not
justifiable to act here out of impulse or out of unreflect-
ing generosity. Immediate and crushing need must be
relieved, but the missionary duty is fundamentally that
of developing believers into free and independent ex-
pression of the religious experience.

Along with that self-support should go everything
that freedom implies. The native should arrive at self-
determination in his own Christian organizations. He
should be allowed to walk in his own way even if he
makes bad blunders, — and this not only for his own
good but for the good of all Christianity. Only thus
will he achieve freedom and only thus will his speech
and deed be distinctive of his race. If Japanese love
of the beautiful is ever to adorn Christianity it should
be in terms of characteristically Japanese art. If racial
peculiarities are worth saving — and they are — they only
can be preserved by the new converts themselves. Free
activity is above all else important : it is the spirit of
Christianity itself. The liberty of the sons of God means
all the types of liberty of all the sons of God.

We should aim to cut the convert loose from depend-
ence on a foreign influence for the sake of his own
self-respect as well as for the contribution which he can
make when he is left more to himself. Except whore
there is some close tie like that of blood, or most inti-
mate friendship, a financial dependence will sooner or

MISSIONARY EFFORT 117

later issue in a servile spirit. It is not wise to make a
Chinese, or other foreign convert, feel dependent on any
money that comes from America. There is some justice
in the jibe of his own countrymen that in such depend-
ence he is a rice Christian, or that he is bought with
American gold. The ideal is that the missionary should
inaugurate Christianity, leave the convert firmly es-
tablished on his own feet, and then go back home, — or to
some other field.

Of course the ideal as thus bluntly put has a trace of
caricature. "We are really thinking of formal relation-
ships. It would be unhappy for Christendom if the
development of an independent spirit in converts to
Christianity meant that all bonds were at last to be cut
between the converts and the missionaries. On the basis
of the friendship established on foreign fields we may
properly desire that the brotherly relations shall con-
tinue forever. But let us remember that brotherly rela-
tions imply a meeting on the plane of equality where
each fully respects every other without a trace even of
inner condescension on the one hand or dependence on
the other. A band of earnest Christian missionaries
were sometime ago grievously hurt by a remark of a
native Indian Christian preacher of superior training
and ability. The missionaries had just communicated
to the Indian that new plans for missionary progress
meant that American missionaries would soon be swarm-
ing into India by hundreds and thousands. The Indian
sighed dejectedly and exclaimed, "What has poor India
done to deserve such an affliction?" The comment
seemed unkind and ungrateful, but it would be most
just if missionary effort were to be conceived of as any-
thing other than the attempt to help India to an in-
dependent seizure of Christianity on her own account.

CHAPTER IX

THE BODY OF CHRIST

If we ask the ordinary believer what is meant by
conventional expressions as to the Body of Christ he
win probably reply that the body of Christ on earth is
the group of all who in spirit follow Christ. He speaks
thus out of a shade of unwillingness to identify the
material revelation of the Christ in our day with the
organized Church, It is a little difficult to think of the
organized activities of the Church as altogether con-
stituting the Body of Christ in the Pauline sense. The
ordinary believer also would feel that there are many
formal communicants of the Church who are not entitled
to be called members of the Body of Christ, and that
there are also multitudes of persons outside the Church
who are justly worthy to be considered members of a
spiritual Christly organism.

Even if we were to look upon the organized Church as
deserving the figurative characterization of the Christ
Body we should not at first think of the more material
phases of the organization as entitled to such high de-
scription. For these material activities often impress
us as forms of Christian duty that have to be gone
through somehow without any surpassing spiritual value
on their own account. This impression, however, must
be mistaken. If we are to have an organization on earth
which we can fitly call a Body of Christ we must order

the Christly purpose into tlie lowliest activities of that

118

THE BODY OF CHRIST 119

body so that these can flash forth something of the
Christ spirit. In the preceding chapters we have been
discussing most practical questions, so practical that
some may wonder that we should deem it necessary to
discuss them at all. "Why not leave such matters to the
interplay of the work-a-day forces and reserve our
strength for more spiritual concerns? Take it for
granted that much earthly work must be done by any
Church on earth. Let such work be put through with
as little noise as possible, and as much out of sight as
possible, while we press on to the higher duties.

If, however, we are to speak of the Church as a Body
of Christ we may just as well make the utmost of the
figure. The harder and tougher the facts of life the
more irresistible their impact on the consciousness of
mankind. If these financial affairs about which we have
been talking are among the inescapable aspects of daily
life, if they bulk more largely in the human consciousness
than almost anything else, why should they not be re-
garded as possibly subject to the spirit of Christ? Why
cannot these prosaic phases of our existence be avowedly
joined with those forces which we conceive of as naturally
belonging to the Body of Christ? Christianity is not
just an ideal floating above the heads of men, to which
they look up for inspiration as they trudge along a dusty
pathway. The ideal is to be a working fact down amid
the dust of the roadway itself.

If Paul's figure means anything it implies that the
organized Church on earth is to render the same service
to Christ himself that Christ's own body rendered during
his life in Judea and Galilee. We are to conceive of the
Church as an organism vitally responsive to Christ im-
pulses. The incarnation of Jesus signifies more than

120 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

that Jesus lived in a human body. It means that he
experienced a normal human existence in the midst of the
most commonplace details of life, — that he worked at a
trade, that he ate and drank with men, that he walked
along the streets of cities and in and out of homes and
shops. Assuming that his career on earth ran through
a period of about thirty-three years, how much of that
time was given to what we might pronounce the more
specific spiritual exercises? The greater number of his
years was passed in an existence to all outward appear-
ances about like that of his fellows. And the greater
number of hours each day had to be devoted to human
processes which we might not think of as definitely re-
ligious. This is much of the significance of the incarna-
tion,— that Jesus chose the ordinary conditions of hu-
man life and showed how a divine life could be poured
through those conditions. Similarly if we believe in the
Church as anew incarnating the spirit of Christ we shall
grievously err if we hold that the Church is doing the
Christly work only when it is engaged in the specific-
ally religious duty. The commoner tasks must be looked
upon also as spheres for revelation by incarnation.

Much that we have said may suggest that the world
of finance into which the Church is more and more press-
ing is almost hopeless as a subject for Christian re-
demption. If we are tempted to such despair let us
remember that at different epochs of the Church's his-
tory philosophers have arisen who have looked even upon
matter itself as inherently evil. They have shrunk back
from the doctrine that the Son of God took upon himself
human flesh because they have declared that flesh cor-
rupt. They have pronounced too against many of the
processes of life and against many of the phases of hu-

THE BODY OF CHRIST 121

man experience as if these could not ever be fit vehicles
for the Christ life. All of which heresy has been re-
peatedly condemned. The charm of the incarnation is
that the Christ so wrought among the commonest of hu-
man duties that men beheld the glory of God full of
grace and truth.

May we say that if masses of mankind ever are to be
reached with a Gospel that transforms even a material
and industrial environment they will have to be reached
as a Church embodies Christian truth in material and
industrial terms? Some men never see anything of re-
ligion except as they behold a churchman. Some never
hear anything suggestive of Christianity except as sub-
stantial church bells peal forth an arresting melody.
The ordinary mind must physically see something. Even
the consciousness of Jesus seems to have been first
awakened to the significance of the Father's house by
the spectacle of the rising altar fires and by the rhythm
of the chanting of the priests. All of us would agree to
this. We shall all sooner or later have to agree further
that some men never will see Christianity in its social
bearing until the Church strides forth to the market
place to buy and sell honestly, until the Church employs
laborers and treats them according to the Christ stand-
ards, and until the Church uses its funds to lift on high
the doctrine of the stewardship of wealth.

But there are good people who will have it that the
instant the Church begins to make these worldly con-
tacts it loses something of the exquisiteness of the flavor
of its spirituality. Likewise some critics of the incarna-
tion might say that the instant incarnated divinity be-
gins to push through the streets of Jerusalem divinity
loses something of its fineness. There is indeed com-

122 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

promise when the Church advances directly into the
shops and marts of men, — compromise in that at any
given moment there is a great deal that the Church must
put up with and get along with. Since, however, there
is no absolute standard to which we can appeal we must
remember that living in this world consists in always
making the best possible ethical adjustments in concrete
situations. Is it more righteous for the Church to stand
off and shout to men what they shall do, or to cast it-
self into the conditions among which men labor and try
there to live forth the Christian spirit? To live forth
the Gospel thus under the actual conditions of modern
existence is a severer tax on loyalty to an ideal than
vocally to preach the ideal. When all is said Christian-
ity consists largely in our work-a-day duty of living to-
gether. If we were all guests in some king's palace, with
bounty heaped upon us from the king's treasury, living
together would chiefly mean observing the rules of eti-
quette, being considerate of one another's rights in con-
versation, and in general being pleasant and agreeable.
Living together, however, in the market place or in the
counting house or in the shops or in the office calls for
quite a different order of brotherly regard. It has been
said by some wise man with a slight tinge of cynicism
that if friends wish to remain friends they should never
allow financial issues to arise between them. But the
Church cannot withdraw from life and meet human
beings in afternoon-tea fashion, or even on the plane of
a friendship which leaves material conditions entirely to
one side. Most dwellers on earth have to work for a
living. Increasingly the Church has to descend into
the money-making world for her living. If Christianity
cannot be revealed through Christian principles in all

THE BODY OF CHRIST 123

the realms that we have discussed, then the Church has
not yet mastered the secret of teaching truth by incarna-
tion.

Suppose we tarry a little longer around this possibility
of a spiritual organism's making a divine revelation
through its existence in material conditions. What does
life mean? Adequate definition is, of course, out of the
question. But we know the most truly alive organism
is the one which can go into almost any environment,
seize out of that environment the elements for its own
life and transform those elements into lofty spiritual
values. How mistaken to fancy that Christianity is a
delicate plant which can flourish only under the most
exquisitely prepared environment. Christianity has in-
deed never yet had an adequate and suitable environ-
ment, but it can make at least a beginning in any cir-
cumstances. The present industrial and social world
begets perhaps more pessimism in the souls of the
spiritually minded than any other sphere of human ex-
istence. Yet if the Church is wise it will grasp the
opportunities in this environment to show that in the
worst of conditions the best of spiritual impulses can be
bodied forth.

One mark of life is thus the power to utilize environ-
ment. Another test is the power to transform environ-
ment. Guided by her ideals of the human and spiritual
values the Church should look upon the business world
as a sphere in which to transform the conditions under
which men live. In our study of Church history we
have all been impressed with the influence of differing
sets of conditions upon religious life. This does not
mean that Christianity is a plastic stuff molded into
varying forms by the potter fingers of successive eras.

124 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

It means instead that the Church has vitality enough to
grasp the materials of any epoch as a! least the occasion
for a fresh manifestation of spiritiir.l excellence. We
have perhaps not duly pondered the truth that the
Church just by being much alive at successive eras has
made and remade the environments through which it has
lived. All this becomes more important if we accept
some of the modern theories as to the function of eco-
nomic factors in history. History has been to an appre-
ciable extent re-written in the past ({uarter century by
scholars who have emphasized the power of economic in-
fluences in determining careers of nations and even the
existence of nations. It is gross materialism to sink
down with a gasp before the play of these forces and to
cry out that ideal elements cannot count. If ideal ele-
ments are to count, however, in the midst of the stream
of these admittedly swift and deep currents, they can
count only as the Church proclaims them and as she
does her part to show in breasting the tug and pull of
economic currents what the ideals mean.

It is objected to ideal interpretations of history that
even if the forces which play in the economic realm back
of the policies of statesmen are not altogether material-
istic they are at least impersonal. l>ut there is nothing
insuperable in the path of making tiiese forces personal
as aiming at the realization of personal values. It will
not avail for the Church to rail at the heartlessness which
works to-day on a world-wide scale if she herself does
nothing to dower impersonal powers with a spiritual
tendency. The soullessness of the economic influences
which sliape even the destinies of nations is but an
implication of the commonplace, everyday doctrine that
business is business. If it is possible to make business

THE BODY OF CHRIST 125

in the limited sphere moral and humane, it is possible
also to introduce morality and humanity into financial
forces that monopolize even an international theater.
The first duty in all such problems is to take hold and
get a leverage somewhere. The Church will soon be, if
it is not now, in mastery over sufficient industrial forces
at least to make a start even toward a better international
order.

We are not concerned, however, merely with the out-
ward results to be won by the effort of the Church to
embody Christian spirit in her material practices. We
are thinking also of the good wrought on the mind of the
Church herself by the handling of material resources to
show forth the spirit of Christ. The modern psycho-
logist tells us that the human hand has had quite as
much to do in developing the mental power of the indi-
vidual and of the race as has the eye or the ear. It is
through the grasp of objects by the hand that perspective
in sight is developed, and that tendencies to inaccuracy
in sight and in hearing are corrected. If it were not for
the hand the eye might conceivably sec everything upon
a flat surface, or at least it might not discern quickly
the spatially real from the fanciful or illusory. We
speak of the powers of the Church as the hand of God.
Such speech suggests a hand like that which clasps the
hand of a brother, or that rests in kindliness upon a
child's head. We may just as well think also of more
prosaic activities as also the touch of the hand of God
upon human life. In spite of all that we have said
about the need of developing a race of prophets who can
give themselves to brooding without overmuch care as
to whether their utterances conform to strict business
principles or not, we must also say that the general

126 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

thought of the Church as to spiritual realities, — the
visions of the Church, so to speak, of the lofty spirituali-
ties,— must be brought into perspective and must be
tested as to their substantiality by working contact with
the world of matter.

Back in the earlier ages, when the Church discounted
the use of material forces by the devouter spirits, think-
ers gave themselves to all excesses of unsubstantial specu-
lations. The debates of that era as to the lot of spirits
in another world, as to the nature of the future rewards
to be meted out to the saints, and of the punishments to
be heaped on the sinners, — all these seem to-day far out
of touch with the universe in which we live. They were
out of touch also wdth the world in which those debaters
lived. We could not get a hearing for such speculation
to-day because we are more open to the pressure of the
system of things around us. To say that the theologians
of that early day had their heads in the clouds is just
another way of saying that they did not have their feet
on the earth.

A concrete earthly situation is an excellent corrective
for the tendency to overuicety in theological speculation.
A shrewd teacher once advocated the training of mind
by the pupil's use of manual tools for the reason that if
a boy made a mistake with a knife he might cut his
finger, — whereas a purel\- intellectual error has no such
immediately painful cutting edge. We would not have
intercourse with that world which is controlled by money
dull the sharpness of a prophet's incisivencss, but we
would have those laboring to bring in the Kingdom of
Heaven learn the patience which is necessarj' in moraliz-
ing business and finance. In face of all our ideals and
theories there is a refractory stubbornness about the

THE BODY OF CHRIST 127

forces in the business world : to be met only by Christian
patience. There are also inexplicable peculiarities in
human nature which crop out only as we meet men in the
shop or the market place. Inasmuch as we are insisting
upon a revelation of the Gospel which will exalt patience
and charity we may just as well make the most of our
opportunities to control sums of money by utilizing
every opportunity for the development of these spiritual
graces. But this does not imply acquiescence. It im-
plies patient continuance and big-hearted charitableness
as we dig away at the imperfection around us.

One reward of the deliberate use of material goods with
high moral responsibility is the development of a quick-
ness and sensitiveness of ethical feeling which is like
the alertness of a nervous system which is most alive.
There can be little doubt that the handling of material
properties with thought chiefly focussed on those proper-
ties themselves, makes for a moral sluggishness and inert-
ness which is a positive drag on the wheels of the King-
dom of God. Wendell Phillips once said that the un-
responsiveness of the North to anti-slavery agitation was
due to the fact that the North as well as the South was
choked with cotton dust and cankered with gold. This
is a familiar phenomenon in the history of every phase
of spiritual progress. To meet riches in a mood of sur-
render to the secular temper deadens the sensibility of
that Church which should be the Body of Christ. We
have, however, emphasized this side of the truth so ex-
tensively that we have been in danger of forgetting
another aspect, — namely the possibility of such honest
dealing with riches when human issues are up as ta
avoid being choked with cotton dust or cankered with
gold, and as to develop an instantaneousness of moral

128 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

response which is like an extraordinary sense of sight or
hearing or touch. We know that it is in these finer
stirrings that full physical vigor shows itself. In many
forms of experience an excellent body will develop such
sensitiveness as to become aware of subtle changes in its
environment before these changes can be caught by more
sluggish nerves. The scout, for example, who keeps his
bodily forces in topmost vigor sees farther and hears
more keenly than the casual tramper through the woods.
He can even develop a mysterious awareness of direction
which enables him to orient himself without stopping to
locate the east. The ideal for the Christian Church is
such integrity and humaneness in its work even with
the material properties which come into its hand, that
out of its moral soundness shall arise a sensitiveness to
the presence of evil which will make the Church the
advance runner toward all necessary industrial and so-
cial transformations.

Every student of current questions must feel that
popular alignment of the Church among the great con-
serv'ative forces is rather dubious praise. It is true that
many churchmen rejoice in the placing of the Church
among the steadying factors in our modem civilization.
Conservatism is indeed well worth while if it means the
thoroughgoing insistence on the everlasting human val-
ues. Christianity, — and the Judaism out of which
Christianity arose, — have always been conservative in
that they have stood for those ideas of the worth of
human life which were among the earliest conceptions
of the Hebrews. But we cannot restrain a suspicion
that this is not what is meant when many churchmen
speak of the Church as conservative. Some churchmen

THE BODY OF CHRIST 129

have a consciousness of the might of the Church as a
bulwark against social, especially against industrial,
change. There is altogether too much reason for fear
that when many defenders of the Church speak of the
conservatism of the Church, they at bottom think of the
sacredness of property rights as over and above human
rights. We may be pardoned for not being excessively
enthusiastic when editors of Wall Street financial baro-
metric reports call loudly for revivals of old-time re-
ligion.

It would be a gloomy reflection if we were to conceive
of the Church as conservative only in a standpat sense,
important as a social ballast may be in storms of wild
reform. If the Church is to exert conservative influence
it must always do so not in the name of the property
values but in that rather of the welfare of men. If
some days it is to be steadying there are other days when
it should be unsettling and disturbing. Its closeness to
large financial operations should give it a quick intuition
as to any inhumanities in these operations. To the
credit of the Church let us say that when moral issues
are once clearly raised it will sooner, rather than later,
get around to an unflinching stand for the right. In
such obvious evils as the barter in human flesh, or the
traffic in degrading drinks, the Church has usually stood
for human justice. The Church, however, has not al-
ways shown keenness in detecting the evils lurking in
beginnings. It has had to wait until the wickedness
unmistakably declared itself. Cannot the conscience of
the Church become so sensitive to evil tendencies as to
detect them at their first slight stirrings? As we review
the course of the centuries we can see many crises where,

130 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS

if the Churcli had been morally alert, fearful social evils
might have been plucked out at the start ; American slav-
ery, for example.

We are aware of the difficulties of keeping alive an
electric moral sensitiveness in the daily contact with the
riches of this world. What Jesus said about the peril
of wealth for the individual is equally valid as to the
peril of wealth for an organization. Yet the moral
miracle can be wrought : the Church can walk in the
midst of money and use the money aright. It can grow
into grace and truth, changing to meet changing environ-
ments, and transforming environments vrith newer and
fresher moral values. But this can only be done as it
brings the spirit of Christ in manifold incarnation into
the closest touch with the processes by which gold is
earned and expended and invested and given away.
These everyday processes are among the basically phy-
siologic energies of a true Body of Christ. Jesus did
not despise this world's goods and he did not surrender
to them. He taught the control of wealth. Through
such control comes one of the fine opportunities of the
Church to show forth in earthly forms the grace and
truth which are in Jesus.

THE END

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